Friday News Roundup - International

The report by special counsel Robert Mueller offered a definitive conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.

Russian president Vladimir Putin famously denied any allegation of Russian interference at a meeting with President Donald Trump in Helsinki, Finland.

Here’s a piece of the report’s findings on interference efforts:

The Internet Research Agency (IRA) carried out the earliest Russian interference operations identified by the investigation-a social media campaign designed to provoke and amplify political and social discord in the United States. The IRA was based in St. Petersburg, Russia, and received funding from Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Prigozhin and companies he controlled. Prigozhin is widely reported to have ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Read the whole report here.

The Trump Camp officials who cited or retweeted IRA-controlled Twitter accounts were (page 33-34):

• Don Jr

• Eric Trump

• Kellyanne Conway

• Brad Parscale

• Michael Flynn

— Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) April 18, 2019

Another nugget with international implications? The NYT‘s Sharon LaFraniere pulled out this piece from the report:

During the campaign, Paul Manafort discussed with a Russian associate a plan to let Russia control part of Ukraine.

Both men believed the plan would require candidate Trump's assent to succeed (were he to be elected president.) They also discussed the status of the Trump campaign and Manafort's strategy for winning Democratic votes in Midwestern states.

And her analysis?

This suggests that Russia was trying to influence the Trump campaign to support a plan that would have allowed Russia to control part of eastern Ukraine, which would have been a huge victory for the Kremlin. Mr. Manafort had shared internal campaign polling data with the Russian associate before their Aug. 2, 2016, meeting — and for some period afterward, the report said.

On the other side of the world, this week the North Korean government reported that the country tested a “new-type tactical guided weapon.” This test comes after talks between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Trump fell apart in February.

And in Indonesia, sitting president Joko Widodo announced he won reelection.

Here’s more on the election’s implications from The Guardian:

Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation, is an outpost of democracy in a South-east Asian neighbourhood of authoritarian governments and is forecast to be among the world's biggest economies by 2030. A second term for Widodo, the first Indonesian president from outside the Jakarta elite, could further cement the country's two decades of democratisation.

Widodo’s win is contentious, as the official election results need to be released by May 22. But Widodo’s opponent, Prabowo Subianto, made an early claim that he had won, with 62 percent of the vote.

French president Emmanuel Macron vowed to rebuild Notre Dame within five years. The cathedral was badly burnt in a fire, although the structure of the building was maintained.

We talked to the French ambassador to the United States about the resonance of Notre Dame’s architecture earlier this this week.

There has been an outpouring of support from around the globe, says @GerardAraud.

— 1A (@1a) April 17, 2019

We’ll bring you all the news headlines from around the world.

GUESTS

Nancy Youssef, National security reporter, The Wall Street Journal; @nancyayoussef

Peter Bergen, CNN national security analyst; vice president and director of the international security program at New America; author of “United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists”; @peterbergencnn

Sylvie Lanteaume, National security correspondent, Agence France-Press; @slvl

For more, visit https://the1a.org.

© 2019 WAMU 88.5 – American University Radio.

Copyright 2019 WAMU 88.5. To see more, visit WAMU 88.5.