Trump Announces 'Hard-hitting' Sanctions against Iran Aimed at Supreme Leader, Other Officials

Washington, Jan 25: US President Donald Trump's legal team was preparing his defence on Saturday after the Democratic prosecutors ended their marathon 24-hour argument to oust him from office during the Senate trial.

In the arguments spread over three days ending on Friday, the Democrat prosecutors from the House of Representatives that had impeached Trump last month, mostly rehashed the testimonies from the hearings before their committees during the investigation and statements in their chamber.

Like the Democrats' arguments, the Trump defence's counter-arguments, also with 24 hours allotted for it, will be mind-numbing monologues for the most part and the real drama will be on a tussle between the two parties on calling witnesses.

The Democrats failed in their repeated attempts on the first day of the trial on January 28 to include calling testimonies from witnesses in the rules of procedure, but they will get another chance to press their case when the defence rests.

There is a tense wait speckled with speculations to see if the Democrats can get four Republicans to defect and vote to call witnesses after failing to sway a mass defection to get the two-thirds majority to convict Trump.

Trump is charged with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in the trial presided over by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts with the Senators acting as jurors.

As the time allotted for the prosecution wound down on Friday, the leading prosecutor, Adam Schiff, demanded that the Republican-controlled Senate convict and remove Trump from office, because he was an "imminent threat" to the US and the nation could not wait for the election to throw him out.

Schiff, who heads the House Intelligence Committee that investigated Trump, gave them a personal warning: "No matter how close you are to this president, do you think for a moment that if he felt it was in his interest, he wouldn't ask you to be investigated?

Jerry Nadler, the head of the Judicial Committee that framed the charges in the impeachment, called Trump a "dictator".

Instead of a full sitting of eight hours, the defence will present its case for only two to three hours on Saturday in what Trump's lawyer Jay Sekulow called a "trailer (for) coming attractions" in the defence counterarguments.

They will get to use their remaining time next week.

The shorter session starting with fuller presentations next week is partly a concession to media savvy Trump who tweeted that daytime Saturday when his defence was slated is a "death valley" on TV as few viewers would watch a political event at that time.

With Trump certain to be acquitted because the Democrats do not have the two-thirds vote, the impeachment process and the Senate trial are only meant to be an extended media show in their campaign for the November election.

The Democrats want to spiff up the TV spectacle by calling former National Security Adviser John Bolton and Trump's acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney as witnesses.

Trump could exercise his executive privilege to stop them from testifying, in which case they could go to court to compel their appearance at the Senate trial extending its duration by months if not weeks.

The House charged him with obstruction of Congress because he refused to allow some of this staff to testify and release documents requested by the House investigators.

The Republicans, who want a quick end to the trial, can also counter the Democrats' request for witnesses by calling former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, to testify in order to embarrass them and their party.

The Bidens are at the root of the abuse of power charges against Trump.

Trump had asked newly-elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelentsky in a July phone call to investigate the Bidens' dealings in his country as a "favour".

Democrats say that this was inviting foreign intervention in US elections because Joe Biden is the leading Democratic party candidate for the nomination to oppose him.

Moreover, they say that he froze about $400 million in Congressionally-approved military aid for pressure Zelentsky to order the probe and this endangered US national security as Ukraine is at war with Russia.

chiff and the other prosecutors said delaying the aid was an attempt at a quid pro quo.

Zelentsky has said that he did not feel pressured by Trump.

Hunter Biden, who was removed from the Navy allegedly due to drug use and had no energy business experience landed a directorship in a Ukrainian gas company with monthly payments reportedly between $50,000 and $83,000 while his father was overseeing Washington's dealings with Kiev.

The former Vice President has publicly admitted that he got the Ukrainian leaders to fire the prosecutor investigating his son's company.

The Republicans have said that the son's appointment was unethical and the father had the prosecutor removed to protect his son's company.

In their arguments, the Democratic prosecutors said there was nothing wrong in Hunter Biden getting the job and his father had the prosecutor dismissed because he was corrupt.

The defence team is expected to assert that Trump withheld the aid because he wanted to be sure that the new government was not corrupt and the aid was released without a probe.

Anticipating the argument, Schiff said that Trump had allowed the aid to go forward only because it became known and his intent still made him guilty.

In another development impinging on the Trump case, a secret recording said to be of the president ordering the firing of Marie Yovanovitch as US ambassador to Ukraine in 2018 has surfaced.

She was one of the witnesses at the House investigations of the charges against Trump.

Jun 4: A malaria drug President Donald Trump took to try to prevent COVID-19 proved ineffective for that in the first large, high-quality study to test it in people in close contact with someone with the disease.

Results published Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine show that hydroxychloroquine was no better than placebo pills at preventing illness from the coronavirus.

The drug did not seem to cause serious harm, though -- about 40% on it had side effects, mostly mild stomach problems.

 “We were disappointed. We would have liked for this to work,” said the study leader, Dr. David Boulware, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Minnesota.

“But our objective was to answer the question and to conduct a high-quality study,” because the evidence on the drug so far has been inconclusive, he said.

Hydroxychloroquine and a similar drug, chloroquine, have been the subject of much debate since Trump started promoting them in March.

Hydroxychloroquine has long been used for malaria, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis, but no large studies have shown it or chloroquine to be safe or effective for much sicker patients with coronavirus, and some studies have suggested the drugs may do harm.

Trump took a two-week course of hydroxychloroquine, along with zinc and Vitamin D, after two staffers tested positive for COVID-19, and had no ill effects, according to results of his latest physical released by his doctor Wednesday.

Federal regulators have warned against hydroxychloroquine's use except in hospitals and formal studies because of the risk of side effects, especially heart rhythm problems.

Boulware's study involved 821 people in the United States and Canada living with someone diagnosed with COVID-19 or at high risk of getting it because of their job -- doctors, nurses, ambulance workers who had significant exposure to a sick patient while not wearing full protective gear.

They were randomly assigned to get either the nutrient folate as a placebo or hydroxychloroquine for five days, starting within four days of their exposure. Neither they nor others involved in the research knew who was getting which pills.

After 14 days in the study, 12 per cent on the drug developed COVID-19 symptoms versus 14 per cent in the placebo group, but the difference is so small it could have occurred by chance, Boulware said.

“There's basically no effect. It does not prevent infection,” he said of the drug. Even if it were to give some slim advantage, “we'd want a much larger effect” to justify its use and risk of side effects for preventing illness, he said.

Results were no different among a subgroup of participants who were taking zinc or vitamin C, which some people believe might help make hydroxychloroquine more effective or fight the coronavirus.

There are some big caveats: The study enrolled people through the Internet and social media, relying on them to report their own symptoms rather than having them tracked in a formal way by doctors.

Participants were not all tested for the coronavirus but were diagnosed as COVID-19 cases based on symptoms in many cases. And not all took their medicines as directed.

The results “are more provocative than definitive,” and the drug may yet have prevention benefits if tried sooner or in a different way, Dr. Myron Cohen of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill wrote in a commentary in the journal.

Others were glad to see a study that had a comparison group and good scientific methods after so many weaker reports on hydroxychloroquine.

“This fits with everything else we've seen so far which suggests that it's not beneficial," said Dr. Peter Bach, director of a health policy center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

This study was in younger relatively healthy people, but the results “would make me very discouraged about trying to use this in older people” who are most vulnerable to serious illness from the coronavirus, Bach said.

“If it does work, it doesn't work very well.” Dr. Dan Culver, a lung specialist at the Cleveland Clinic, said there's still a chance that giving the drug sooner than four days after someone's exposure to the virus may help prevent illness.

But the study “takes 'home run' off the table” as far as hopes for the drug, he said.

The study was mostly funded by David Baszucki, founder of Roblox, a California-based game software company, and other private donors and the Minnesota university.

Boulware also is leading a study testing hydroxychloroquine for treating COVID-19. The study is finished and results are being analyzed now.

On Tuesday, the journal Lancet posted an “expression of concern” about a study it published earlier this month of nearly 15,000 COVID-19 patients on the malaria drugs that tied their use to a higher risk of dying in the hospital or developing a heartbeat problem.

Scientists have raised serious questions about the database used for that study, and its authors have launched an independent audit.

That work had a big impact: the World Health Organization suspended use of hydroxychloroquine in a study it is leading, and French officials stopped the drug's use in hospitals. On Wednesday, the WHO said experts who reviewed safety information decided that its study could resume.

The head of the World Health Organisation on Tuesday warned the novel coronavirus was a "very grave threat" for the world as he opened a conference to combat the epidemic.

"With 99% of cases in China, this remains very much an emergency for that country, but one that holds a very grave threat for the rest of the world," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in Geneva.

Some 400 scientists will review how the virus is transmitted and possible vaccines at the two-day forum.

"What matters most is stopping the outbreak and saving lives. With your support, that's what we can do together," Tedros said.

The virus, first identified in China on December 31, has killed more than 1,000 people, infected over 42,000 and reached some 25 countries.

Participants will also discuss the source of the virus, which is thought to have originated in bats and reached humans via another animal such as snakes or pangolins.

There is no specific treatment or vaccine against the virus, which can cause respiratory failure.

Tedros, who has repeatedly urged countries affected to share their data, called for global "solidarity".

"That is especially true in relation to the sharing of samples and sequences. To defeat this outbreak, we need open and equitable sharing, according to the principles of fairness and equity," he said.

"We hope that one of the outcomes of this meeting will be an agreed roadmap for research around which researchers and donors will align," Tedros said.

Several companies and institutes in Australia, China, France, Germany and the United States are racing to develop a vaccine -- a process that normally takes years.

Asked whether scientists from Taiwan would be allowed to take part in this week's Geneva conference, WHO officials said that they would do so but only online -- along with colleagues from other parts of China.

While the WHO does not deal with Taiwan directly and only recognises Beijing, Taiwan was often allowed to attend annual assemblies and sideline meetings as an observer.

But in recent years it has been frozen out as Beijing takes an increasingly combative stance towards democratic Taiwan, which it considers its own territory.