- Salman Khan touches Usha Uthup’s feet at Umang 2023, leaves a lasting impression on his fans timesofindia.com
- Deepika Padukone In A Sabyasachi Saree Was Just A Royal Display Of Ethnic Style At Umang 2023 NDTV
- Ranbir Kapoor’s stellar moves light up recent event as he dances to ‘ Pyaar Hota Kayi Baar Hai’ timesofindia.com
- Deepika Padukone, Kiara Advani, Janhvi Kapoor, Ananya Panday and others: Divas who ditched gowns for sarees at Umang Hindustan Times
- Umang 2023: From Arbaaz Khan confirming his second wedding to Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan’s energetic performances, a peek inside the star-studded event The Indian Express
Tag Archives: touches
Papua New Guinea’s PM touches Modi’s feet: Why this island country is important for India – The Indian Express
- Papua New Guinea’s PM touches Modi’s feet: Why this island country is important for India The Indian Express
- Papua New Guinea PM touches PM Modi’s feet in a heartwarming gesture | Watch Hindustan Times
- Secretary Antony J. Blinken At the U.S.-Pacific Islands Forum Meeting – United States Department of State Department of State
- Indian PM Modi Arrives in Papua New Guinea for Forum | VOA News Voice of America
- ‘Millet Biryani, Paan Kulfi…’ PM Modi hosts a lunch for FIPIC leaders, check out the menu Times of India
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Justice Department criminal investigation now touches nearly all efforts to overturn 2020 election for Trump
The investigation is also stretching into cogs of the sprawling Trump legal machine that boosted his efforts to challenge his electoral loss — with many of the recipients of 30-plus subpoenas that were issued in recent days being asked to turn over communications with several Trump attorneys.
The sweeping effort has many in Trump world concerned about the potential legal significance of being caught up in a federal investigation.
The flurry of investigative activity has involved seizure warrants, including one served to Trump counsel Boris Epshteyn for his phone, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. Epshteyn remains close to the former President and his political and fundraising operation.
The widening pool of recipients of subpoenas also includes prominent Trump deputies, such as his former White House adviser Dan Scavino, who continued to work for Trump after he left office.
The subpoena language and activity bring together the seemingly far-flung parts of the DOJ investigation.
The Justice Department previously obtained grand jury testimony, conducted searches and nabbed extensive documents about rally organization and fundraising, about efforts in and around the White House to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to block certification of the election results, and about the fake electors. This new round of subpoenas drills down with more specific requests about the baseless claims of mass election fraud that were being peddled to legislators, law enforcement and others.
In one of the new subpoenas viewed by CNN, along with demands for communications with a lengthy list of Trump-world figures and fake electors, the investigators ask for documents related to the raising and spending of money. Prosecutors are interested in the financing around the January 6 rally, bids to challenge the results and the Trump-aligned political organization formed after the election to push fraud claims.
The assistant US attorneys signing the subpoenas are working as part of the team led by prosecutor Thomas Windom in the DC US Attorney’s Office, according to court records and multiple people familiar with the investigation. Two DC US Attorney’s Office supervisors appear on the subpoenas as well, indicating the latest sweep serves both the ongoing fake elector probe and the prosecution office’s larger mission to target planning of violence before January 6, according to the sources familiar with the team’s work.
The subpoenas also ask for the recipients to identify all methods of communication they’ve used since fall 2020 and to turn over to DOJ anything the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, has demanded — whether they cooperated with the House panel or not.
“They’re now encompassing individuals closer and closer to the President to learn more and more about what the President knew and when he knew it,” David Laufman, an attorney and former federal prosecutor, said Monday on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront.”
There are no public indications that the DOJ’s January 6 probe is overlapping with the federal investigation into the handling of classified documents from Trump’s White House and seizure of materials from Mar-a-Lago. However, the latest developments in the 2020 election investigation come as the documents probe has already put Trump allies on high alert for potential legal exposure.
While those around Trump have brushed off the congressional investigation into the riot on January 6 as political, there is a palpable shift in demeanor when it comes to the Department of Justice probe, as allies and advisers recognize the significance of being looped into a federal investigation, according to multiple people in Trump’s orbit. The Trump-world figures now swept up in the investigation claim the department is on a fishing expedition that is impeding on privileged communications.
“It’s all very distressing to me as an American and as a prominent attorney for Donald Trump,” said Bruce Marks, an attorney whose communications are of interest to investigators, according to the recently issued subpoenas.
Marks took issue with DOJ seeking any of his communications with the campaign, claiming that those exchanges should be confidential under attorney-client communications principles. (The DOJ has used teams and additional court sign-offs to filter out privileged communications collected in other recent January 6 investigative steps, and not all communications records of attorneys are necessarily privileged.)
Notorious for leaking, a usually verbose Trump world has also fallen virtually silent in the wake of dozens of grand jury subpoenas being sent in recent days. Some subpoenaed have spent the last several days scrambling to find the right lawyers and understand the scope of what the Department of Justice is seeking from them. Others, already entangled in other Trump investigations, know the drill — keep quiet until the dust settles.
An aggressive new phase as a pre-election quiet period starts
The burst of investigative activity came just as the Justice Department runs into its so-called 60-day rule, an internal policy that discourages prosecutors from taking public steps in cases that stand to influence a coming election.
Previously, investigators sought any records of interactions with a set of a dozen Trump officials, largely lawyers and those working with the fake electors including Rudy Giuliani, Epshteyn and John Eastman.
But the latest subpoenas also ask for communications with new names: high-profile right-wing Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Cleta Mitchell, as well as Marks, a lawyer based in Philadelphia who assisted with Trump’s election appeals and in an attention-grabbing court case where Giuliani tried and failed to throw out all of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes.
Marks told CNN on Tuesday that he was among Trump’s lawyers after the election and was reporting to and communicating frequently with Giuliani and Epshteyn over text messages and emails about post-election efforts. Epshteyn was assisting Giuliani in much of his attempts to block the vote outcome electing Joe Biden.
The warrant served to Epshteyn, seeking his phone, is another signal of how the probe has escalated.
In June, the Justice Department seized the phone of Eastman, the Trump attorney who spearheaded the far-fetched legal theory that Pence could hold up Congress’ certification of Biden’s win. Federal investigators also that month searched the home of an ex-DOJ official, Jeffrey Clark, who was at the center of Trump efforts to pressure the department to support his plots.
Prosecutors’ willingness to obtain a warrant for Epshteyn’s phone hints that they see the campaign strategist — who is currently an adviser to Trump — as playing an integral role in Trump’s 2020 election machinations. When the agents seized and imaged his phone, they also served him a subpoena for documents, according to some of CNN’s sources.
Epshteyn did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment about the search of his phone. The New York Times was first to report the seizure of his phone.
The wider net the department is now casting is also evident in the types of Trump-world figures who received the latest round of subpoenas. They include former campaign manager Bill Stepien and Sean Dollman, who worked for Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign as chief financial officer, as well as Scavino, Trump’s former deputy chief of staff and an architect of Trump’s social media presence.
Also receiving a subpoena was Bernard Kerik, a former New York City police commissioner who worked with Giuliani to find evidence of voter fraud in the weeks following the 2020 election, as did Women for America First, the pro-Trump group that organized the rally that preceded the Capitol attack.
Kerik was approached by a handful of agents who tried to ask him questions, which he refused to answer and so they handed him a subpoena, a person familiar with the episode said. The agents asked if he would be willing to talk with an attorney present. Eventually the agents handed him the document.
This story has been updated with additional details.
CNN’s Zachary Cohen contributed to this report.
Treasury yield touches 2.91%, a level not seen since late 2018
U.S. Treasury yields rose Tuesday, as traders fret over concerns of rising inflation and tighter monetary policy.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note briefly touched 2.91%, reaching levels not seen since late 2018. The benchmark rate later eased from those levels, trading at around 2.886% at 6 a.m. ET.
The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond fell less a basis point to 2.9512%. Yields move inversely to prices and 1 basis point is equal to 0.01%.
Concerns around rising inflation and its effect on economic growth has seen investors sell out of bonds over the past couple of months, pushing up yields.
Data released last week showed consumer and producer prices continued to rise in March, fueling investor beliefs that the Federal Reserve could increase the size of its interest rate hikes, in a bid to control this inflation.
St. Louis Fed president James Bullard told CNBC’s Steve Liesman on Monday that “quite a bit has been priced in” in terms of Fed actions.
The Russia-Ukraine war has exacerbated pricing pressures. The World Bank said Monday that it had cut its annual global growth forecast for 2022 from 4.1% to 3.2%.
The Ukrainian military says Russia’s long-expected offensive push into eastern Ukraine has started, with intensified assaults Monday in the Slobozhansky and Donetsk operational districts in the north and east of the country.
March’s building permits and housing starts numbers are set to be released at 8:30 a.m. ET on Tuesday.
— CNBC.com staff contributed to this market report.
Nasa’s solar probe ‘touches’ sun for first time, dives into unexplored atmosphere | Nasa
A Nasa spacecraft has officially “touched” the sun, plunging through the unexplored solar atmosphere known as the corona.
Scientists announced the news Tuesday during a meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
The Parker solar probe actually flew through the corona in April during the spacecraft’s eighth close approach to the sun. Scientists said it took a few months to get the data back and then several more months to confirm.
Nour Raouafi, a project scientist with Johns Hopkins University, described the news as “fascinatingly exciting”.
Because the sun lacks a solid surface, the corona is where the action is; exploring this magnetically intense region up close can help scientists better understand solar outbursts that can interfere with life here on Earth.
Launched in 2018, Parker was 8m miles (13m kilometers) from the center of the sun when it first crossed the jagged, uneven boundary between the solar atmosphere and outgoing solar wind. The spacecraft dipped in and out of the corona at least three times, each a smooth transition, according to scientists.
“The first and most dramatic time we were below for about five hours … Now you might think five hours, that doesn’t sound big”, the University of Michigan’s Justin Kasper told reporters. But he noted that Parker was moving so fast it covered a vast distance during that time, tearing along at more than 62 miles (100 kilometers) per second.
The corona appeared dustier than expected, according to Raouafi. Future coronal excursions will help scientists better understand the origin of the solar wind, he said, and how it is heated and accelerated out into space.
Preliminary data suggest Parker also dipped into the corona during its ninth close approach in August, but scientists said more analyses are needed. It made its 10th close approach last month.
Parker will keep drawing ever closer to the sun and diving deeper in to the corona until its grand finale orbit in 2025.
The latest findings were also published by the American Physical Society.
NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity touches down on the Red Planet
The first helicopter on Mars is officially on Martian soil.
NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity touched down on the surface of the Red Planet after being dropped by its mother ship, the Perseverance rover, the space agency announced late Saturday (April 4). The helicopter’s first flight is just over a week away.
“#MarsHelicopter touchdown confirmed! Its 293 million mile (471 million km) journey aboard @NASAPersevere ended with the final drop of 4 inches (10 cm) from the rover’s belly to the surface of Mars today,” officials with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California wrote in a Twitter announcement. “Next milestone? Survive the night.”
Video: Watch NASA’s Mars helicopter unfold like a butterfly
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Weighing in at just 4 lbs. (1.8 kilograms), Ingenuity is a tiny, solar-powered helicopter that relies on a rechargeable battery to keep its systems warm during the harsh Martian night. Until today, Ingenuity has been attached to Perseverance’s belly, feeding off the rover’s nuclear-powered system to stay warm.
Now, the helicopter is using its internal battery to power a vital heater.
“This heater keeps the interior at about 45 degrees F through the bitter cold of the Martian night, where temperatures can drop to as low as -130 F (minus 90 degrees Celsius),” NASA’s Bob Balaram, chief engineer for the Mars Helicopter project, wrote in a status update Friday (April 2). “That comfortably protects key components such as the battery and some of the sensitive electronics from harm at very cold temperatures.”
Ingenuity is expected to make its first flight on April 11, with the data from that test reaching Earth on April 12, NASA officials have said. The $85 million drone is the first helicopter ever sent to another world and is designed to test technologies for future flying vehicles on other planets. Ingenuity carries two cameras to document its flights, which will also be observed by the Perseverance rover.
If all goes well, Ingenuity will perform a series of ever-longer flights over Jezero Crater (where the Perseverance rover landed on Feb. 18) over the next 31 Martian days, which are called sols. Each flight should reach no higher than 16.5 feet (5 m) and will be conducted over a 300-foot-long (90 m) flight range.
NASA plans a series of tests before that first flight to fire up Ingenuity’s four rotor blades (they spin at up to 2,537 revolutions per minute) while Perseverance watches from a safe distance. The rover will be stationed a safe 16.5 feet away from the drone before the first flight.
In photos: NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover on the Red Planet
But first, of course, Ingenuity must survive the bitter cold of its first night alone on Mars. The helicopter’s battery will power its heater enough to maintain a steady temperature of about 5 degrees F (minus 15 degrees C).
“The Ingenuity team will be anxiously waiting to hear from the helicopter the next day,” Balaram wrote Friday. “Did it make it through the night? Is the solar panel working as expected?”
Mission team members will closely watch Ingenuity’s temperature and battery performance over the weekend to ensure the helicopter is healthy, Balaram added. If everything looks good, Ingenuity can then move on to its rotor tests and other system checks ahead of the first flight, he said.
As novel as Ingenuity is, the helicopter is just part of NASA’s ambitious Perseverance rover mission to explore an ancient delta in Mars’ Jezero Crater. The rover is expected to spend the next two years exploring the area to seek out signs of ancient life. Perseverance will also collect samples of Mars rocks to be collected and returned to Earth on a later mission.
Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Instagram.
Pope Francis touches down in Baghdad, hoping to boost an ancient Christian church and a war-torn country
The trip, which marks the first-ever papal visit to Iraq, also includes meetings with the country’s top political and religious officials. It is the pontiff’s first trip outside of Italy since the start of the pandemic.
“I am happy to start trips again and this is a symbolic trip. It’s a duty,” the Pope told journalists traveling with him on the papal plane. “It has been a martyred land for too long.”
On Friday, the pontiff held meetings with Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi and President Barham Salih. Rows of traditional dancers, none of whom wore masks, greeted the Pope as he arrived at Baghdad International Airport.
Pope Francis and his entourage have all been vaccinated.
He will later meet with clerics and other officials at a Baghdad church that was the site of a bloody 2010 massacre.
“Holy Father, we are healing our wounds, and here you are, healing our wounds with us,” said Salih in an impassioned speech on Friday at a meeting with the Pope.
The Pope said he has come to Iraq as a “pilgrim.”
“I come as a penitent, asking forgiveness of heaven and my brothers and sisters for so much destruction and cruelty,” said the pontiff during a speech on Friday. “I come as a pilgrim of peace in the name of Christ, the Prince of Peace. How much we have prayed in these years for peace in Iraq.”
Francis was widely expected to cancel the visit after a surge in coronavirus cases gripped Iraq in recent weeks, and a spate of new rocket attacks deepened security fears. But the Pope insisted that the visit go on as scheduled, referring to Iraq’s ancient Christian community as “that martyred Church.”
“For some time I have wanted to meet that people who suffered so much, Francis said on Wednesday. “The people of Iraq are waiting for us. They were waiting for St. Pope John Paul II, who was not allowed to go,” he added, referring to a planned trip in 2000 which was canceled after a breakdown in talks between the Vatican and then President Saddam Hussein.
“The people cannot be let down for a second time. Let us pray that this trip can be carried out well.”
Iraqi officials have hailed the visit as an important moment for the country, while privately admitting that the timing of the trip has proved a challenge for authorities.
Iraq has imposed a total curfew for the entirety of the four-day papal visit in an attempt to minimize health and security risks.
One of the key parts of the Pope’s itinerary is a Saturday visit to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, a widely revered Shia cleric. Sistani will receive the pontiff at his residence in the holy city of Najaf, to the south of Baghdad.
The papal meeting with the 90-year old Sistani — who is rarely seen in public — can be seen as one of the most significant summits between a pope and a leading Shia Muslim figure.
Francis has met with leading Sunni cleric Grand Imam Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb on several occasions, famously co-signing a 2019 document pledging “human fraternity” between world religions.
The meeting with Sistani is expected by some to serve as the Shia Muslim component of the pontiff’s efforts to bolster interfaith relations.
‘I hope the Pope stays for a month’
The Pope is also scheduled to visit several Iraqi areas and cities linked to the Bible, such as the plain of Ur, considered the birthplace of Abraham.
He is believed to have long wished to go to Iraq, which figures heavily in the Old Testament, and whose dwindling Christian minority has suffered greatly from the country’s long cycles of violence.
Thought to be one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, prior to the 2003 US invasion, there were 1.5 million Christians in Iraq. Around 80% of them have since fled, according to leading Christian clerics there.
Members of the Christian minority, which was the target of repeated attacks by extremists, say they hope the papal visit will underscore the neglect they feel they have endured from Iraq’s authorities.
Many in the country’s Muslim majority, who loudly complain about government corruption and mismanagement, also have their hopes pinned on trip.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis staged months-long street demonstrations, some of which were violently quashed, in the months before the coronavirus pandemic began to spread here.
“The country needs services, security and peace,” said 50-year-old Mohammed Jassem. “[The Pope] can’t give us these things but we ask him to call on the leadership and the parties for these things.”
“We call on him to unify its ethnicity … the country requires unity and we hope he can bring us this,” he added.
Iraqi authorities have been busy preparing for the papal visit, cleaning streets and re-paving others where the Vatican delegation is scheduled to go. New street lamps light the roads and many previously broken traffic lights are back in commission.
The irony is not lost on Iraqis. “The streets of Baghdad have become a lot better within a week,” said 41-year-old shopkeeper Ahmad al-Assadi. “I wish he would stay for a month and tour all of Iraq … maybe then they can fix the entire country.”
CNN’s Ben Wedeman, Ghazi Balkiz in Baghdad contributed to this report. CNN’s Hamdi Alkhshali contributed to this report from Atlanta.