One state department official reportedly saw this whole Biden mess coming.
Back in 2015, career State Department official George Kent warned that Hunter Biden's spot on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma was sending the wrong message to the corruption-riddled Ukraine, three people say Kent told Congress on Tuesday. But when he raised those concerns to a staffer for then-Vice President Joe Biden, Kent says they shut him down, The Washington Post reports.
While the Bidens have claimed there was nothing ethically wrong with Hunter Biden's Burisma work, they've also said it was a mistake for him to take the role. That's the essence of what Kent reportedly told Congress during his testimony in President Trump's impeachment inquiry on Tuesday. Kent largely feared Hunter Biden's job "would complicate efforts by U.S. diplomats to convey to Ukrainian officials the importance of avoiding conflicts of interest," per the Post. Ukraine, the Post continues, might "view Hunter Biden as a conduit for currying influence with his father," Kent reportedly continued.
Kent reportedly said he told an unnamed Biden staffer about his fears, but "was told the then-vice president didn't have the 'bandwidth' to deal with" it because his other son Beau Biden was fighting cancer, the Post writes. The Post previously reported Biden staffers briefly discussed the possibility of Hunter Biden's work being seen as a conflict of interest. Read more at The Washington Post. Kathryn Krawczyk
Hollywood has once again spun the wheel of intellectual property to revive for the big screen and landed, this time, on Barney.
A new live-action movie based on the dinosaur from our imagination is in the works, with Get Out star Daniel Kaluuya producing, The Hollywood Reporter writes. The Oscar-nominated actor sure goes overboard in his announcement, seeming to stop just short of declaring this reboot will save cinema itself and isn't a Barney movie, but a Barney film.
"Barney was a ubiquitous figure in many of our childhoods, then he disappeared into the shadows, left misunderstood," Kaluuya declared. "We're excited to explore this compelling modern-day hero and see if his message of 'I love you, you love me' can stand the test of time."
The studio's description of the film wasn't much less over-the-top, with Mattel Films head Robbie Brenner promising a "completely new approach" to Barney "that will surprise audiences and subvert expectations" and "speak to the nostalgia of the brand in a way that will resonate with adults, while entertaining today's kids." Yes, we're still talking about Barney here.
There's no other details yet about how exactly the film plans to subvert expectations, perhaps with a Joker-style gritty origin story revealing Barney's troubled past, but stay tuned for more information about the inevitable Best Picture winner and to find out whether Martin Scorsese considers Barney movies to be cinema. Brendan Morrow
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver says China wanted Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey fired over his Hong Kong tweet, but China is already denying it.
Silver spoke Thursday amid the ongoing controversy that began when Morey earlier this month tweeted his support for the pro-democracy, anti-Beijing Hong Kong protests. The NBA immediately distanced itself from his tweet in a statement, prompting criticism that it was kowtowing to the Chinese government due to the league's business in China.
Following that criticism, Silver defended Morey's freedom of speech, and he spoke further about the situation on Thursday, explaining that "we were being asked to fire [Morey], by the Chinese government, by the parties we dealt with, government and business,” The Washington Post reports. He added, "We said there's no chance that's happening."
But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang claims there's no chance the request itself happened, saying the "Chinese government never posed this requirement," The Associated Press reports.
Silver also said Thursday the NBA's initial statement calling Morey's tweet regrettable was "misinterpreted," since it was referring to "the fact that we'd upset our Chinese fans" and "there was no regret directed to the [Chinese] government." China's state broadcaster in the aftermath of the tweet suspended the broadcast of NBA games, with Silver saying Thursday the "financial consequences have been and may continue to be fairly dramatic." Brendan Morrow
Mexican security forces on a routine patrol in the northern Mexican city of Culiacan came under fire from a house on Thursday, returned fire and took control of the house, and discovered among its four occupants Ovidio Guzman, one of jailed drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's sons and apparent successor as a leader in the Sinaloa cartel, Security Minister Alfonso Durazo said in a televised message Thursday night. Guzman's armed allies quickly arrived and "surrounded the house with a greater force," he added, and "other groups carried out violent actions against citizens in various points of the city, generating a situation of panic."
Durazo later told Reuters that the National Guard patrol released Guzman, in what the Los Angeles Times called "a stunning humiliation for the Mexican government" and a challenge to new President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. "The decision was taken to retreat from the house, without Guzman, to try to avoid more violence in the area and preserve the lives of our personnel and recover calm in the city," Durazo told Reuters.
Along with losing Guzman, who the U.S. has indicted on drug trafficking charges along with older brother Ivan Archivaldo Guzman Salazar, the state and federal police lost control of Culiacan. Video footage from the city "showed heavily armed men firing on police, with cars, bodies, and burning barricades strewn in the road," BBC News reports. Sinaloa state authorities advised residents to shelter in place as "fighters swarmed through the city, battling police and soldiers in broad daylight," Reuters reports. "They torched vehicles and left at least one gas station ablaze, and "a large group of inmates escaped from the city prison."
A rival cartel is suspected of ambushing and killing of 14 police officers in Michoacan state Monday, and the army killed 14 suspected gangsters the next day. Murders in Mexico are on track to hit a record high this year. Peter Weber
Some people are clearly happy about the five-day pause in fighting in northeastern Syria that Turkey and the U.S. negotiated Thursday — Turkey refuses to call it a ceasefire — giving America's Kurdish former allies a chance to retreat from a "safe zone" Turkey plans to carve out inside Syria.
President Trump called the deal "a great day for civilization," while Turkish officials and pro-government media hailed it as a "great victory" in which "Turkey got everything it wanted." The chaos in northeast Syria is also "proving to be a propaganda windfall" for the Islamic State, which is "racing to capitalize on the deteriorating security situation," The Washington Post reports.
But fighting continued Friday morning, with shelling and gunfire in the border towns of Ras al-Ayn and Ceylanpinar, The Associated Press and Reuters report, suggesting the truce hasn't gone into effect everywhere. Kurdish commanders, who had no part in Thursday's negotiations, suggested they would try to abide by the ceasefire unless attacked. An aide to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad called Turkey's pause "ambiguous" and said Syria and its Russian allies might not sign on, BBC News reports.
The Kurds are also accusing Turkish-backed forces of using white phosphorous and possibly napalm against civilians in Ras al-Ayn. Turkey denies using the banned chemicals to burn and maim people, but photos of burned children from the area lend credence to the allegations, Foreign Policy reports. A senior U.S. administration official and an aid organization both confirmed that civilians have turned up with wounds consistent with white phosphorous, and the U.S. official told Foreign Policy that "Turkey will be held accountable by the international community for the crimes they commit against the Kurds."
At a rally in Dallas on Thursday night, Trump compared the battle between the Kurds and Turkey to "two kids in a lot," adding, "you've got to let them fight and then you pull them apart." He said the ceasefire never would have happened without the "tough love" he showed Turkey. Peter Weber