The son of US president-elect Donald Trump’s national security adviser — who has pushed wild conspiracy theories on social media — has been dismissed from the president-elect’s transition team, US vice president-elect Mike Pence confirmed on Tuesday.
“Mike Flynn Jr is no longer associated with general Flynn’s efforts or with the transition team and we’re focused eyes forward,” Pence told CNN, saying the younger Flynn had been helping his father with scheduling and other administrative work.
The ouster of 33-year-old Michael G. Flynn, son of retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn — who was tapped last month for the powerful national security adviser role — came after he made controversial statements about an armed man’s weekend attack at a popular pizza restaurant in Washington.
Edgar Maddison Welch, 28, said he was investigating online “reports” that Comet Ping Pong was at the center of a pedophile ring linked to US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.
No one was hurt after Welch fired off a round from his AR-15 assault rifle.
Police quickly arrested him, discovering two more weapons, and said he had told them he drove up from North Carolina to personally investigate “Pizzagate.”
Michael G. Flynn said on Twitter that “Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it’ll remain a story.”
He also retweeted the comments of others promoting the fake stories about the restaurant.
The incident raised questions about Lieutenant General Flynn. He had not commented publicly on the Comet incident, but in early November he tied Clinton to pedophile rings in a tweet of his own.
“U decide — NYPD [New York Police Department] Blows Whistle on New Hillary Emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w Children, etc...MUST READ!” he wrote ahead of the Nov. 8 election.
He also provided a link to a related fake news story.
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
RSS