The US House of Representatives voted on Thursday night to reject a sweeping bill that would have enacted most of the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission. The draft was similar to a Senate bill backed by President George W. Bush and the commission's leaders.
The vote, 213-203, appeared to clear the way for passage on Friday of a related bill being offered by House Republican leaders that includes many contentious law-enforcement provisions that were not recommended by the Sept. 11 commission and have been strongly criticized by Democrats and civil liberties groups.
The Republican bill would create the post of national intelligence director, in keeping with the commission's central recommendation, but would provide the intelligence director with significantly less budgetary and personnel authority than the commission recommended and than is offered in the Senate bill.
Commission members and congressional Democrats have warned that by pursuing a bill so different from its popular Senate counterpart, House Republicans may have made it impossible for Congress to agree on a final bill this year, perhaps ending any hope for the intelligence overhaul recommended by the bipartisan commission.
"The Republican leadership insists on pursuing a highly partisan process," said Representative Jane Harman. "The American people want us to defend our country, not our turf."
House Republican leaders acknowledged that their bill did not incorporate major recommendations of the commission.
The defeated bill incorporated many of the central provisions of the bipartisan bill adopted on Wednesday in the Senate, 96-2, including creation of a powerful national intelligence director to direct all of the spy agencies.
"Why would the House want to adopt a bill which falls so short of the reforms identified as urgently necessary and adopted unanimously by the bipartisan commission and by the Senate?" asked House leader Nancy Pelosi.
The House vote was a second disappointment Thursday for members of the Sept. 11 commission. The other came in the Senate, which voted 74-23 to reject the most important of the recommendations made by the panel for overhauling how Congress conducts oversight of intelligence issues. The commission described congressional intelligence oversight as "dysfunctional."
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing