Month: April 2019

The organiser of a white supremacist march in Washington DC at the weekend has been left red-faced, after a video emerged showing him being scolded by his father during an interview in his family home.

Jason Kessler, 34, organised last year’s Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which resulted in the death of counter protester Heather Heyer. He organised an anniversary march in DC this weekend, which was attended by a few dozen people, and dwarfed by a huge counter-protest.

In a clip circulated on Tuesday, originally filmed in June, he was recording an hour-long livestream with the alt-Right Patrick Little discussing Jews, when his father barged in furiously told him off, mid-interview.

“Hey! You get out of my room!” yelled Eric Kessler, Jason Kessler’s father.

Mr Little, 33, who ran an unsuccessful campaign for a Senate seat in California, chuckles at the interruption of his neo-Nazi conspiracy theories concerning Jews, castration and slavery.

He asks: “You got a drunk roommate there?”

Looking sheepish, Mr Kessler tried to explain the situation to his friend, saying: “I have somebody who supports Israeli, uh… orthodox… We are kind of at crosshairs on that right now.”

His father presses on, yelling at Mr Kessler: “I want this to stop in my room, Jason. This is my room.”

Mr Little can be heard sniggering as Mr Kessler excuses himself and walks off-screen.

“You’re not living with an Orthodox Jew are you?” Mr Little asks.

Mr Kessler tries to explain the rift in his house, saying: “My family watches the History Channel and it’s all this propaganda – ‘the Nazis’ and ‘the Jews’." 

He goes on to complain his father is “cucked” — an insult often used by the alt-Right — because he watches “constant anti-German propaganda” on the History Channel.

When he wants to express his views on Jews, he retreats to his father’s bedroom, he explained.

“And I’m stuck in this situation where, with all these lawsuits, I need to stay with my family.”

Mr Little nods, explaining that he is planning on renting out the houseboat on which he lives to pay for his expenses.

Eric Kessler told The Washington Post earlier this year that his family was “dismayed across the board about this situation. We’ve never identified with racial politics.”

He added that despite living in the same house he had very little interaction with his son since he learned of his radical views, shortly before last year’s rally.

Jason Kessler, however, told the paper that he has been treated unfairly.

“I’ve been turned into an avatar of hate,” he said.

The White House on Tuesday declined to "guarantee" that Donald Trump had  never been recorded using the n-word as he faced claims of racism from a  former aide. 

Asked if she could say with absolute certainty the American people would  never hear such a tape, Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary,  said: "I cannot guarantee anything".

The surprise admission came after former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman claimed Mr Trump had been recorded using the racial slur while filming his reality TV show The Apprentice. 

Ms Sanders said: "I can’t guarantee anything. But I can tell you that the  president addressed this question directly on Twitter. I can tell you that  I’ve never heard it." 

When pressed on the issue a second time, Ms Sanders said: "Look, I haven’t  been in every single room. I can tell you the president has addressed this  directly. He has addressed it directly to the American people. 

"I can tell you what the focus and heart of the president is, and that is  helping all Americans". 

Mr Trump has vehemently denied using the slur. 

Ms Manigault Newman, a former Apprentice star, has claimed to have spoken  to three sources who confirmed the existence of a tape in which Mr Trump  uses the n-word. 

The former aide, once one of the president’s most prominent black supporters, has made the claims in a tell-all memoir detailing her year in  the White House. 

She has also released a string of covert recordings she made of officials as she promoted the release of her book, Unhinged, on Tuesday. 

The US president has vehemently denied using the n-word and lashed out at his former aide, referring to her as a "dog" as he denounced her claims.

Mr Trump also claimed that the show’s British former producer, Mark Burnett, had called him to confirm that no such tape existed.

"When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the  White House, I guess it just didn’t work out. Good work by General Kelly  for quickly firing that dog!" he tweeted. 

Critics have condemned Mr Trump for what they said were racial and sexist  undertones to his tweet.

On Tuesday, CBS News released another of Ms Manigault Newman’s records from October 2016 in which she and several other Trump campaign aides discuss  the alleged tape of Mr Trump using a racial epithet during The Apprentice. 

The recording appears to show Ms Manigault Newman discussing with Trump  campaign aides Katrina Pierson and Lynne Patton how to respond to the  remarks. 

"I’m trying to find out at least what context it was used in, to help us maybe try to figure out a way to spin it," a woman, identified as Ms Pierson, can be heard saying.

"He goes, ‘how do you think I should handle it,’ and I told him exactly what you just said, Omarosa," Ms Patton says, "which is ‘well, it depends on what scenario you’re talking about.’ And he said, ‘well, why don’t you just go ahead and put it to bed.’"

"He said it," Ms Pierson interjects. "No, he said it. He’s embarrassed."

Ms Pierson, who served as a spokeswoman for his 2016 campaign, said she has never heard Mr Trump use this type of language, telling  Fox News that the only person she heard talking about a tape was Ms  Manigault Newman. 

While Ms Patton said on Twitter the staff had "multiple conversations about the alleged ‘Apprentice’ tape" because Ms Manigault Newman was "obsessed with it".

"It should be abundantly clear to everyone that not only is her book a  complete work of fiction, but that the existence of this elusive ‘n-word’  tape is a figment of her imagination," Ms Patton said in a statement.

Mr Trump brought on Ms Manigault Newman, previously known for repeatedly being fired on The Apprentice, as director of communications for the White House Office of Public Liaison.

Ms Manigault Newman has hinted that she has several more tapes of conversations with White House staff and is willing to hand them over to the Special Counsel’s Office investigating alleged Russian collusion in the 2016 presidential election. 

Mr Trump’s re-election campaign announced on Tuesday that it is taking legal action against Ms Manigault Newman over her public bashing of the president.

The campaign has filed for arbitration against the former White House aide arguing that she has violated a confidentiality agreement she signed in 2016, while she was still a member of Mr Trump’s presidential campaign.

The claim, filed with the American Arbitration Association in New York, highlights statements Ms Manigault Newman made during her time on Mr Trump’s campaign as well as in the White House, as well as her recent release of several tape recordings of White House officials.

“President Trump is well known for giving people opportunities to advance in their careers and lives over the decades, but wrong is wrong, and a direct violation of an agreement must be addressed and the violator must be held accountable,” a campaign official told The Washington Examiner.

Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s prime minister, has been ridiculed for using a knife and fork to eat a meat pie, prompting claims he has upended a venerated tradition and left the nation “forever changed”.

In a move likened to Ed Miliband’s awkward consumption of a bacon sandwich in 2014, Mr Turnbull sat down to eat a pie during a campaign stop in Tasmania and opted to use cutlery. 

Footage of the incident was posted on his Instagram account and quickly prompted fierce debate. 

“A pie that small should, and always will be, only eaten by a technique that is learned when you go to a school with a tuck shop,” one person wrote on Twitter.

 “Two hands. Gently press down on the far side whilst slightly slurping the near side.” 

Australians typically eat a meat pie with their hands and many consider it a native dish, though it is believed to date back at least as far as ancient Greece. 

A report on the Ten Daily website said “Australia Is Forever Changed” and suggested the incident would not have secured any votes for Mr Turnbull, who has been campaigning ahead of a series of by-elections on Saturday.

“Remember the old riddle, Malcolm,” said the report. “What’s the best thing to put into a pie? Your teeth.”

The incident was compared with former prime minister Tony Abbott’s memorable bite into an unpeeled raw  onion and with Australian opposition leader Bill Shorten’s decision to eat a sausage sandwich by biting into the middle rather than starting at the end. Some critics also questioned Mr Turnbull’s decision to forgo tomato sauce. 

“[Mr Turnbull] has become the latest to join the pantheon of Pollies Who Look Like Aliens Around Regular Foodstuff,” said a report in The Australian.

“It’s easy to laugh, but it is a minefield.”

In pictures: Politicians and the greatest food faux-pas of all time

However, Mr Turnbull received some support as defenders noted the difficulty of cleanly eating a pie without cutlery.

“It’s time we admitted there’s nothing wrong with using a knife and fork to eat a pie,” said 2GB Radio commentator Ben Fordham on Twitter. “Discuss.”

One response said: “It’s about the enjoyment!  If you like to enjoy it without the threat of a lava hot mouthful burning you from the inside out or cascading down the front of your clothes, then the plate, knife and fork is preferable!  As my Nana said, ‘To each, his own!’”

The promotion of breastfeeding as a scientifically sound and cheap way to fight childhood malnutrition was dealt a blow after revelations US President Donald Trump’s administration successfully watered down a World Health Organization resolution.

The non-binding resolution put forward in May, was fairly straight-forward: encourage the practice of breastfeeding and put an end to deceptive marketing practices that encourage mothers to abandon breast-feeding in favour of formula milk.

But an Ecuadorian source told the New York Times that the small Latin American country was informed that if it didn’t water down the language, the US might withdraw military aid it had been providing in northern Ecuador to fight dissident Colombian guerrillas.

Breastfeeding rates | Around the world

Ecuador withdrew and a race began at the World Health Organization meeting to find a new patron for the resolution. Russia eventually passed a similar resolution, but with a key difference: it removed all but one reference to the 1981 International Code of Marketing for breast-milk substitutes which was adopted to make sure that baby-formula marketing from big companies would not discourage mothers from breastfeeding.

One such big formula company, Abbott Laboratories, was a major donor to Trump’s election campaign and his inauguration ceremony.

Trump took to Twitter in response to the news reports, criticising the New York Times and saying that his administration “strongly supports breastfeeding.”

The US position may seem another in a series of controversial moves by President Trump, but this is not new.

Back when the International Code of Marketing was introduced in reaction to dodgy marketing practices by Nestle in the developing world, the US was the only dissenting vote in the motion, which passed 118 to one.

There is a large amount of money at stake for manufacturers: the global market for formula was $70 billion (£52.8 billion), as of 2016, with China and Hong-Kong and Indonesia driving much of that growth.

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One possible reason that Ecuador put forward the resolution in the first place is that one in four children under the age of five are chronically malnourished in the developing country of 16 million people.

To combat this, the Ecuadorian government recently launched the next phase of their ‘Misión Ternura’, a health program attempting to reduce chronic malnutrition of kids under five by 10 per cent and increase breastfeeding by 18 per cent by 2021. Globally, nearly half of all childhood deaths are attributable to undernutrition.

Dr Stacey Lockyer, a nutrition scientist with the British Nutrition Foundation said breast milk contains all the nutrients babies need for healthy development and also contains antibodies to protect them against childhood illnesses such as infections, sudden infant death syndrome and leukaemia.

“Adults and teenagers who were breastfed are less likely to become overweight and are less likely to develop type 2 diabetes or heart disease,” she said, ”Breastfeeding also has health benefits to mothers including reducing the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, breast and ovarian cancer and postnatal depression.”

Despite this, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health says that in the UK only 34 per cent of babies are receiving some breast milk at 6 months compared with 49 per cent in the US and 71 per cent in Norway. The rates for exclusive breastfeeding, where only breast milk is being given, are even lower.

A review by UK medical journal The Lancet found that there were no countries in the world that had breast-feeding levels needed for the best health outcomes.  

Joy Lawn, Professor of Maternal, Reproductive and Child Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said if they did, it could save 800,000 lives around the world.

“I have worked for years in Africa and, particularly in Ghana, there is a lot more acceptance: they can see that the babies that aren’t exclusively breastfed get sick or die, ” she said.

“But when I was based in the US, the culture was completely different, you couldn’t even call it breastfeeding, you had to call it nursing.

Prof Lawn said a lack of maternity and paternity leave was also a factor.

“It’s really hard to continue to exclusively breastfeed once you are back at work, especially if there’s not that societal or structural support.”

World Breastfeeding Week begins on August 1.

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A Japanese advertising agency has started selling ad space on the armpits of attractive young women, snagging a beauty treatment clinic as its first client.

The Wakino Ad Company – “waki” is the Japanese term for armpit – was set up earlier this year as a subsidiary of the Liberta beauty products firm, which does a brisk trade in items designed to make armpits beautiful.

The company’s web site has images of sample adverts, with a rectangular, full-colour ad measuring nearly 2 inches by 4 inches nestled snugly into an armpit costing ¥10,000 (£68.60) for one hour of exposure. The models displaying the adverts are pictured grasping overhead handles on trains or stretching to show off their armpits.

The Seishin Biyo Clinic has been the quickest off the mark to secure this unconventional advertising space, using models’ armpits to raise awareness – appropriately – of its painless underarm hair removal procedure, the Togech news site reported.

The company is looking to hire more armpit models, Wakino Ad states on its web page, including male models. It has also announced plans to stage a beauty contest to find the most attractive armpits in Japan.

Armpits are not the first part of the female body that Japanese advertisers have been encouraged to take advantage of, with Absolute Territory PR in 2013 launching a campaign to encourage advertisers to purchase space at the back of models’ legs, strategically between the hem of miniskirts and the top of long socks.

More than 1,300 women applied to be advertising hoardings in the first three months after the company was set up.

Wakino Ad’s campaign, however, is likely to go into hibernation as soon as the autumn months arrive and young women begin to cover up to keep warm.

Donald Trump unexpectedly doubled metal tariffs against Turkey on Friday, inflaming tensions with a Nato ally and sending the country’s currency spiraling downwards. 

The US president announced in a tweet that tariffs on steel imports from Turkey would rise to 50 per cent and on aluminum imports to 20 per cent. 

The action was taken after talks broke down over the release of US pastor Andrew Brunson, who is in Turkey facing trial for espionage and terror-related charges.

After the announcement the embattled Turkish lira tumbled more than 16 percent to new record lows against the dollar on Friday. It is down more than 40 per cent this year. 

Mr Trump referenced the fact the lira had been sliding “rapidly downward” against the dollar in his tweet announcing the news, adding: “Our relations with Turkey are not good at this time!”

But Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, was defiant, urging citizens to cash in their foreign currency for lira and pledging to win the trade war that had broken out. 

"If you have dollars, euros or gold under your pillow, go to banks to exchange them for Turkish lira. It is a national fight," Mr Erdogan said.

"This will be the response to those who have declared an economic war," he added, blaming Turkey’s woes on an "interest rate lobby" seeking to push the country to higher rates.

Mr Erdogan had raised eyebrows on Thursday when he appeared to invoke divine intervention, saying: "If they have dollars, we have our people, we have our right and we have Allah!"

Turkey’s trade ministry also claimed that the steel and aluminium tariffs were against the rules of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Tensions between America and Turkey have been ratcheting up in recent months, despite the latter being a critical ally for the US’s military engagement in the Middle East. 

Mr Trump is demanding the return of Mr Brunson, who is accused of being involved in the failed coup to overthrow the Turkish government in 2016.

The US government has dismissed the claims against the evangelical Presbyterian pastor as baseless and without evidence.

Mr Erdogan is in turn demanding the extradition of Fethullah Gulen, an exiled cleric living in Pennsylvania whom the Turkish government accuses of being behind the coup attempt. America has refused. 

Talks involving Mike Pence, the vice president, and Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, to secure Mr Brunson’s release have reportedly being going on being the scenes in recent weeks. 

However they appear to have stalled. Sanctions on Turkey were announced earlier this month over Mr Brunson’s case before being increased by Mr Trump on Friday. 

Mr Trump’s recent frustration towards the Turkish leader is in marked contrast to their personal relations earlier in his presidency. 

The US president has previously called Mr Erdogan a "friend of mine" and even once reportedly fist-bumped him during a meeting. 

But the rhetoric between both men has escalated markedly in the last fortnight, with little sign of tensions easing any time soon. 

Mr Erdogan talked to Vladimir Putin, the Russian president whose country has also been hit by new sanctions this week, on the phone on Friday. 

The pair discussed economic and trade issues as well as the Syria crisis, the Turkish presidency said – fueling suggestions that both countries could strike up a closer partnership. 

The White House sought to clarify Mr Trump’s tweet on Friday, saying he had "authorised the preparation of documents" – suggesting the tariffs could yet be avoided. 

Can Selcuki, an analyst with Istanbul Economics Research and former economist with the World Bank, said Mr. Erdogan’s defiant words were simply political rhetoric.  

“He’s clearly aware of what the stakes are but he’s in the middle of a very fierce bargain with the US and he wants to appear strong and uncompromising of his position,” Mr Selcuki stated.

In a more market-friendly speech, the Turkish Treasury and Finance Minister BeratAlbayrak, Erdogan’s son-in-law, insisted the central bank was independent, a key concern which contributed to the currency’s plunge.

The bank eventually increased interest rates in May but analysts say more is needed to cool off an overheated economy with a large amount of foreign debt.