A Washington consultant, who was a business associate of Paul Manafort, pleaded guilty Friday to failing to register as a lobbyist working on behalf of a Ukraine political party and agreed to cooperate with authorities, according to federal court records.

W. Samuel Patten, 47, was charged with one count of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act for failing to register with the Justice Department, according to the four-page charging document from Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael DiLorenzo.

Patten was a business associate of Konstantin Kilimnik, who has ties to Russian intelligence. Kilimnik worked closely with Manafort and is a co-defendant in the pending case that accuses them both of witness tampering.

Patten pleaded guilty before U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who will also be hearing a case against Manafort starting Sept. 24 involving charges of money laundering and failing to file as a foreign agent.

Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, was convicted Aug. 21 of eight counts of tax and bank fraud in a separate trial in Virginia.

Patten surrendered his passport and was released on his own recognizance pending sentencing. He faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, referred Patten’s case to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.

Under the 10-page plea agreement requiring cooperation with the government, Patten no longer faces potential charges for making false statements or obstructing the Senate Intelligence Committee, or for causing foreign money to contribute to Trump’s 2016-2017 inauguration committee.

But Patten must cooperate fully, truthfully and completely with Mueller’s office and other law enforcement authorities, including testifying in court, under the agreement.

Patten represented the Opposition Bloc, a Ukrainian political party and its members, including a prominent oligarch, according to court records. For his work, the company that Patten created with a Russian national who isn’t named in the documents received more than $1 million through an offshore Cypriot account.

The work involved setting up meetings in January 2015 with officials in the executive branch and members of Congress, to influence U.S. policy. Patten and his partner drafted periodic op-ed articles for U.S. press, including in January and February 2017.

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While it may look like a funny robot, this cushion is actually a device that is aimed to relax muscles. The  ‘Zyllion Shiatsu Back Neck Massager‘ was designed for those who multi-task. Slip it on your work chair and let the nodes go to work. 

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A spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority has called the US decision to halt funding the United Nations’ agency assisting Palestine refugees across the Middle East a “flagrant assault” against Palestinian people.

“The consecutive American decisions represent a flagrant assault against the Palestinian people and a defiance of UN resolutions,” PA spokesman Nabil Abu Rdainah told Reuters.

“Such a punishment will not succeed to change the fact that the United States no longer has a role in the region and that it is not a part of the solution.”

The US government, a major ally of Israel, has said its decision to stop funding the United Nations Relief Works and Agency came after determining the organisation to be an “irredeemably flawed operation”.

In a statement on Friday, the State Department’s spokeswoman Heather Nauert said that UNRWA’s “endlessly and exponentially expanding community of entitled beneficiaries is simply unsustainable and has been in crisis mode for many years”.

“The administration has carefully reviewed the issue and determined that the United States will not make additional contributions to UNRWA,“ Nauert said.

UNRWA was established in 1949 after 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their homes by Zionist paramilitaries in the run-up to the establishment of the state of Israel.

It currently provides services to five million Palestinian refugees in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

Under the Donald Trump administration, the US government had previously slashed its budget to UNRWA operations in the occupied Palestinian territories from $365m to just $65m, resulting in work redundancies and a drop to part-time contracts for many of the agency’s Palestinian employees and full-time staffers.

In late June, the UN had asked member states to fill a critical funding gap caused by the US government’s funding cuts.

“The situation of Palestinians is defined by great anxiety and uncertainty, first because Palestinian refugees do not see a solution to their plight on the horizon,” Pierre Krahenbuhl, UNRWA’s director told a UN conference.

Friday’s move came a week after the US announced that it was cutting more than $200m in economic aid to Palestinians.

Earlier this week, UNRWA warned that if Washington went through with its funding cut it would likely result in greater instability in the region.

“You have to ask yourself the question: what would the Middle East look like if the most vulnerable people in that region were not to be receiving services from a UN humanitarian organisation,” agency spokesman Chris Gunness told Anadolu Agency.

The US government is also pushing for a reduction of the number of Palestinian refugees, from five million to 500,000, and count only those who were directly displaced from their homes seven decades ago.

Consequently, millions of their descendants will be excluded.

SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies

Pro14: Ospreys 17-6 Edinburgh – radio & text – BBC Sport

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WASHINGTON – Roberta McCain – the 106-year-old mother of Sen. John McCain – got her first chance to say goodbye to her son Friday during a memorial service at the U.S. Capitol.

Sitting in a wheelchair, McCain’s elegant white-haired mother was pushed up to her son’s flag-draped coffin, where she made the sign of the cross before being wheeled away.

The scene touched members of the public watching the funeral on television.

Susan Mitchell tweeted that the image “just about broke my heart.”

Republican strategist Ana Navarro – a friend of McCain’s – tweeted that she had last seen Roberta and John McCain together six years ago, at Roberta’s 100th birthday celebration. She said their mutual adoration was obvious.

The senator died last Saturday of brain cancer at the age of 81 at his home in Arizona.

Roberta McCain was unable to attend her son’s memorial services earlier this week in Phoenix, Ariz., but she lives in Washington, D.C., and joined the rest of the McCain family at the Capitol on Friday.

More: Nation’s political leaders pay tribute as John McCain lies in state at U.S. Capitol

More: John McCain’s letter to a future Navy pilot arrived two days after his death. Here’s what he told him.

During the service, Roberta McCain, dressed in white and black, held hands with her granddaughter, Meghan McCain, as they both wiped away tears.

Roberta McCain also plans to attend her son’s funeral service at the Washington National Cathedral on Saturday. Former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush will both offer eulogies there.

On Sunday, Roberta McCain – an admiral’s widow – plans to attend a private service and burial ceremony for the senator at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. He graduated from the Naval college and will be buried near a friend.

In his 2008 speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination, McCain said he would never have made it that far without his mother and “the strength of her character.”

“When I was growing up, my father was often at sea, and the job of raising my brother, sister and me would fall to my mother alone,” McCain said. “Roberta McCain gave us her love of life, her deep interest in the world, her strength, and her belief that we’re all meant to use our opportunities to make ourselves useful to our country.”

 

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The interactive AR documentary Terminal 3 turns viewers into customs officers at an airport terminal, where they interrogate the holograms of people who appear to be Muslim to decide whether they will let them into the country. The augmented reality experience was directed by artist Asad J. Malik in partnership with the immersive studio RYOT. 

The head of the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR) has warned that a potential government offensive in the last rebel-held stronghold in Syria risks causing renewed displacement and discourage others Syrians from returning home.

The comments by Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees, on Friday came as protesters in Idlib rallied against the threat of military action by Syrian forces and its Russian ally to capture the strategic northwest province bordering Turkey.

Idlib is home to an estimated three million people, half of whom are internally displaced after being transferred en masse to the province from other areas that fell to pro-government forces.

Grandi, who is in Lebanon after visiting Syria and  Jordan , said an all-out attack threatens to cause many civilian deaths and fresh displacement, as well as discourage the return of other refugees.

Speaking to reporters in Beirut, Grandi said an offensive was going to make the situation “very difficult” and appealed to the Syrian government to find a way forward that would “spare civilian lives”.

“You risk also sending a message to refugees that the situation is not secured,” Grandi said. “Refugees will be watching very closely what is happening in Idlib in the next few months.”

Idlib is largely controlled by Hay’et Tahrir al-Sham, which is dominated by a rebel faction that was previously known as al-Nusra Front until it cut its ties to al-Qaeda.

Turkey blacklists HTS

Turkey has been trying to avoid a large-scale assault on Idlib, primarily by utilising pledges made via the Astana diplomatic track to maintain a lasting ceasefire.

On Friday, Turkey – which has 12 military observation posts inside Idlib aimed at monitoring a de-escalation zone and backs other rebel groups in the province – officially designated HTS as a “terrorist” organisation.

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters on Friday that Ankara “is trying to prevent an attack on Syria’s Idlib, which could be a disaster”.

Cavusoglu echoed Grandi in saying that a new offensive could result in a fresh wave of refugees.

“It is important for all of us to neutralise these radical groups,” he said. “But we have to distinguish the civilians from the terrorist groups.”

Intense negotiations have been under way for weeks between Russia and Turkey, which hosts some three million Syrians and has already stated that it will not open its borders to accept further refugees in the event an assault takes place.

‘Afraid of retribution’

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the Syrian government had every right to chase fighters out of Idlib.

Syrian government forces “had the full right to protect its sovereignty and to drive out, liquidate the terrorist threat on its territory”, Lavrov was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

He also said that negotiations are under way to establish a humanitarian corridor for civilians to be able to leave Idlib. The UN on Thursday proposed establishing the corridor, which would channel civilians to government-held areas. 

Speaking from Beirut, Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr said that the UN has reiterated its long-standing position that due to Syria’s instability, it is still premature to organise large scale refugee returns.

“These returns cannot be, in the words of the head of the UNHCR, sustainable,” she said.

Many refugees and internally displaced persons remain fearful of what awaits them in government-held areas, added Khodr.

“A lot of them are afraid of retribution,” she explained. “They fear that there are no safety guarantees in place to make sure the Syrian government does not take any measures against them simply for accusing them of supporting the opposition,” she said.

SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies

Ariana Grande celebrated Aretha Frankin‘s life and legacy on Friday (August 31) with a powerful tribute at the late singer’s funeral service. Taking the stage at Detroit’s Greater Grace Temple, Grande brought her A-game to a moving performance of “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” a beloved hit from the Queen of Soul, who died earlier this month at age 76 after battling pancreatic cancer.

Singing a Franklin classic in front of the late icon’s family and friends was no doubt a daunting task, but Grande handled it with grace, keeping her usual verbal gymnastics in check to deliver a beautiful, faithful rendition. She was backed by a small group of soulful backup singers, and moved several members of the crowd — which included her fiancé, Pete Davidson, and former President Bill Clinton — to sing along. Grande’s ex and Detroit native Big Sean even gave her a sweet standing ovation.

After Grande’s performance, Bishop Charles H. Ellis III, who co-officiated the ceremony, joked about the 25-year-old’s inclusion in the service. “When I saw Ariana Grande on the program, I thought that was a new something at Taco Bell,” he hilariously quipped, as the singer and the rest of the congregation laughed. He sweetly added, “Girl, let me give you all your respect. Did you all enjoy this icon? She’s an icon herself.” Grande, for her part, added a simple, “We love you, Aretha” before trotting off stage.

Grande — who joined a star-studded list of performers that included Stevie Wonder, Faith Hill, and Jennifer Hudson — was asked to sing at the funeral after Franklin’s family was moved by her emotional rendition of “Natural Woman” on The Tonight Show earlier this month. On the show, Grande recounted her memories of meeting Franklin, saying, “I met her a few times. We sang at the White House, and she was so sweet, and she was so cute. I was like, ‘How are you a real person?’ It’s an honor to have met her, and we’re gonna celebrate her.”

She definitely did just that. Revisit Grande’s Tonight Show tribute below.

Watch live as Wales host England in a Women’s World Cup qualifier – Live – BBC Sport

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