MOSCOW, November 17. /TASS/. Secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council and former Defense Minister Rustem Umerov has extended his foreign visit amid reports about his possible involvement in the high-profile corruption scandal gripping his government, a member of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada, or parliament, said.

"Umerov’s official trip was to be completed yesterday. He has extended it until November 19. Well, Rustem, we are waiting," Alexey Goncharenko (designated as terrorist and extremist in Russia) wrote on his Telegram channel.

A number of Telegram channels had reported that Umerov refused to return to Ukraine.

https://tass.com/world/2044783

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c891jp9j79do
US President Donald Trump has said he will take legal action against the BBC over how his speech was edited by Panorama, after the corporation apologised but refused to compensate him.

Speaking to reporters on board Air Force One on Friday evening, Trump said: "We'll sue them for anywhere between $1bn [£759m] and $5bn, probably sometime next week."

On Thursday, the BBC said the edit of the 6 January 2021 speech had unintentionally given "the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action" and said it would not be broadcast again.

The corporation apologised to the president but said it would not pay financial compensation.

The BBC released that statement after Trump's lawyers threatened to sue the BBC for $1bn in damages unless the corporation issued a retraction, apology and paid him compensation.

"I think I have to do it," Trump told reporters of his plan to take legal action. "They cheated. They changed the words coming out of my mouth."

The controversy stems from the way in which Trump's 6 January 2021 speech was edited by Panorama for a documentary which aired in October 2024. During his address, he told supporters: "We're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women."

More than 50 minutes later in the speech, he said: "And we fight. We fight like hell."

In the Panorama programme the clip shows him as saying: "We're going to walk down to the Capitol... and I'll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell."

Controversy around how Trump's speech was edited has led to the resignations of BBC director general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/14/jeffrey-epstein-steve-bannon
The convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein apparently served as a behind-the-scenes adviser to the former Trump official and Maga influencer Steve Bannon during an August 2018 media campaign to defend Trump and his agenda, and to promote Bannon’s media ventures.

Text messages released by the House oversight committee on Wednesday detail a six-day exchange between the men from 17 to 23 August, and show Epstein coaching Bannon on television appearances and political messaging.

One side of the conversation is sent from an iMessage account associated with an Epstein email address, and while the name of Epstein’s correspondent is redacted in the documents as released, contextual clues – including references to Fox News appearances, his August 2017 firing from the White House and his work on the documentary Trump @War – make it clear the other participant is Bannon.

It is not known whether the released material is excerpted from a longer conversation. Bannon did not reply to multiple requests for comment from the Guardian. When Elon Musk said earlier this year that “Bannon is in the Epstein files”, Bannon told the Independent he wanted a special investigator to look into “all” the Epstein documents.

The exchanges offer a detailed picture of Bannon’s efforts to continue supporting Trump a year after his acrimonious departure from the White House, and show Epstein’s close involvement in crafting messaging on tax cuts, immigration and even security clearance revocations.

They also show the two men’s responses to breaking scandals. When news broke on 23 August that the National Enquirer publisher David Pecker had received immunity in the Michael Cohen case, Bannon texted “Huge event huge”, followed by “More women payoffs coming.”

https://www.axios.com/2025/11/13/gallup-us-religion-plunge-shift-global-declines

Fewer than half of Americans now say religion is an important part of their daily lives, a 17 percentage point drop since 2015, which ranks among the largest declines in the world, according to a new Gallup poll.

Why it matters: The U.S. was once exceptional for its high religiosity among wealthy nations. The shift reflects profound cultural changes that could reshape politics, social ties and even national identity.

By the numbers: In the latest Gallup Poll released Thursday, only 49% of U.S. adults say religion is essential to their daily life, down from 66% in 2015.

That decline is among the biggest measured globally since 2007, Gallup said.
Among 38 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations, a median of 36% of adults call religion important — a figure the U.S. is rapidly approaching.

What they're saying: "Such large declines are rare," Gallup researchers Benedict Vigers and Julie Ray wrote.

Vigers and Ray said that only 14 out of more than 160 countries have seen drops of over 15 percentage points in religious importance over the past decade.
"The U.S. increasingly stands as an outlier: less religious than much of the world, but still more devout than most of its economic peers."

https://www.npr.org/2025/11/17/nx-s1-5610501/trump-seth-meyers-fired

NBC late night host Seth Meyers has consistently made President Trump the target of his jokes. The latest bits include Meyers teasing about a recent decline in Republican support of the president and his recent comments to Fox News host Laura Ingraham that America doesn't have enough skilled workers for certain jobs.

Trump seems to have had enough with Meyers, as he had with late night hosts Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel.

"NBC's Seth Meyers is suffering from an incurable case of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS)," the president posted on Truth Social on Nov. 15. "He was viewed last night in an uncontrollable rage, likely due to the fact that his "show" is a Ratings DISASTER. Aside from everything else, Meyers has no talent, and NBC should fire him, IMMEDIATELY!"

Less than an hour later Trump's tirade was reposted on X by Brendan Carr, chairperson of the Federal Communications Commission, the independent agency that regulates radio, TV, wire, satellite and cable across the country.

While the FCC can fine broadcasters for indecency, it has limited authority over content. According to its website, "The limitations on the FCC's power to restrict or ban speech begin with the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which decrees that the federal government 'shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.'"

Carr's repost drew quick criticism.

In an email to NPR, Lisa Macpherson, policy director at the consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge, wrote that Carr's intervention is "a distortion of the FCC's authorities in an effort to force the media to toe the line for President Trump."

https://apnews.com/article/trump-pardon-biden-justice-department-ed-martin-d525b1911534a40f70394fddf396acc1

Justice Department quietly replaced ‘identical’ Trump signatures on recent pardons

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department posted pardons online bearing identical copies of President Donald Trump’s signature before quietly correcting them this week after what the agency called a “technical error.”

The replacements came after online commenters seized on striking similarities in the president’s signature across a series of pardons dated Nov. 7, including those granted to former New York Mets player Darryl Strawberry, former Tennessee House speaker Glen Casada and former New York police sergeant Michael McMahon. In fact, the signatures on several pardons initially uploaded to the Justice Department’s website were identical, two forensic document experts confirmed to The Associated Press.

Within hours of the online speculation, the administration replaced copies of the pardons with new ones that did not feature identical signatures. It insisted Trump, who mercilessly mocked his predecessor’s use of an autopen, had originally signed all the Nov. 7 pardons himself and blamed “technical” and staffing issues for the error, which has no bearing on the validity of the clemency actions.

The questions about Trump’s signature come amid a new flurry of clemency and weeks after the president claimed to not even know Changpeng Zhao, a crypto billionaire he pardoned last month. He said in an interview with 60 Minutes that the case had been “a Biden witch hunt.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/17/trump-ready-to-sign-security-agreement-with-saudi-arabia-deepening-us-commitment-00653108

President Donald Trump is making a high-profile overture to Saudi Arabia and its polarizing de facto leader — even as some major MAGA figures say the White House is too focused on foreign affairs at the expense of domestic issues.

When Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman arrives at the White House on Tuesday, it will mark the first such visit since he was implicated in the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

And he will be feted as one of the United States’s closest allies, expected to receive significant economic and national security wins.

Trump, who will also host Mohammed at a lavish dinner, is considering a bilateral security agreement pledging to defend Saudi Arabia in the event of any attack, according to a person familiar with the plans who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. It would mark the second such NATO-style pact with a Gulf ally, coming on the heels of Trump’s executive order in September promising to defend Qatar.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/15/fly-tippers-dump-mountain-of-waste-in-oxfordshire-field

>Fly-tippers dump ‘mountain’ of waste in Oxfordshire field

>Area’s MP says it would cost more than local council’s annual budget to remove the 10-metre high pile of waste

Fly-tippers have dumped a “mountain of illegal waste” in Oxfordshire so large that removing it could cost more than the local council’s annual budget, the area’s MP has said.

Hundreds of tonnes of waste, stacked 10 metres high, appeared in a field between the River Cherwell and the A34 near Kidlington. One charity called the huge dump of rubbish “an environmental catastrophe unfolding in plain sight”.

Calum Miller, the Liberal Democrat MP for Bicester and Woodstock, told parliament the “estimated cost of removal is greater than the entire annual budget of the local district council”.

He added: “Criminals have dumped a mountain of illegal waste weighing hundreds of tonnes in my constituency on a floodplain adjacent to the River Cherwell. The Environment Agency said it has limited resources for enforcement.”

Friends of the Thames said the illegal rubbish dump was created about a month ago by an organised crime group. It said no visible containment or mitigation measures appeared to be in place.

The charity’s chief executive, Laura Reineke, said: “This is an environmental catastrophe unfolding in plain sight.

“A mountain of waste has been allowed to build up just metres from the Rver Cherwell – an illegal landfill sitting on the floodplain of one of our most important waterways.

“Every day that passes increases the risk of toxic runoff entering the river system, poisoning wildlife and threatening the health of the entire catchment.

“The Environment Agency must act now, not in months or years – which is their usual reaction time.”

> Thread theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xhy3G7-2fcY

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/social-media-erupts-far-left-163050898.html

> Social media erupts after far-left mayor gives victory speech in foreign language: 'Humiliating'

Newly re-elected Minneapolis Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey is facing backlash from conservatives for giving a victory speech in Somali and saying that Minneapolis welcomes Somalians.

In a video of the speech posted online, Frey can be seen leading chants in Somali as the crowd responds and applauds.

Popular conservative influencer Paul Szypula ripped into the progressive mayor, writing, "The pandering here is insane."

"Mayor Jacob Frey, as he won reelection, spoke almost a minute in Somalia then said Minneapolis belongs to Somalia," said Szypula.

In a second round of nonpartisan ranked-choice voting, Frey narrowly defeated a challenge from socialist Minneapolis state Sen. Omar Fateh. Fateh is the first Somali American and first Muslim to serve in the state Senate.

Fateh had the backing of the Twin Cities' chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and "Squad" member Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who represents Minneapolis in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, former Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate last year who is up for re-election next year, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., endorsed Frey's campaign this year.

https://www.reuters.com/business/trump-cuts-tariffs-beef-coffee-other-foods-inflation-concerns-mount-2025-11-14/
WASHINGTON, Nov 14 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order to exempt a wide range of food imports, including beef, tomatoes, coffee and bananas, from sweeping tariffs imposed earlier this year on nearly every country, the White House said.
The order is part of a major push by Trump and his top officials to address Americans' growing concerns about persistently high grocery prices.

The new exemptions - which take effect retroactively at midnight on Thursday - mark a sharp reversal for Trump, who has long insisted that his import duties are not fueling inflation. They come after a string of victories for Democrats in state and local elections in Virginia, New Jersey and New York City, where affordability was a key topic.
It said any refunds due would be processed under the rules and procedures of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Trump has upended the global trading system by imposing a 10% base tariffs on imports from every country, plus additional specific duties that vary from state to state.
Friday's ordered followed framework trade deals announced on Thursday that will eliminate tariffs on certain foods and other items imported from Argentina, Ecuador, Guatemala and El Salvador, once those deals are finalized, with U.S. officials eyeing additional deals for signing before year's end.

Consumers have remained frustrated over high grocery prices, which economists say have been fueled in part by import tariffs and could rise further next year as companies start passing on the full brunt of the import duties.