News Headlines - 25 August 2019
▽Boris Johnson seeks legal advice on five-week parliament closure ahead of Brexit | The Guardian
Boris Johnson has asked the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, whether parliament can be shut down for five weeks from 9 September in what appears to be a concerted plan to stop MPs forcing a further extension to Brexit, according to leaked government correspondence.
An email from senior government advisers to an adviser in No 10 - written within the last 10 days and seen by the Observer - makes clear that the prime minister has recently requested guidance on the legality of such a move, known as prorogation. The initial legal guidance given in the email is that shutting parliament may well be possible, unless action being taken in the courts to block such a move by anti-Brexit campaigners succeeds in the meantime.
▽G7 summit: Iran foreign minister makes surprise Biarritz appearance | The Guardian
Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has made a surprise appearance in Biarritz meeting Emmanuel Macron, in the midst of a G7 summit where western policy towards Iran has been one of the most contentious issues.
On Sunday evening, Zarif posted a picture on Twitter of his meeting with the French president and the foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, reportedly in the office of the Biarritz mayor, across the road from a building where G7 leaders had been meeting. The Iranian foreign minister said he had also provided a briefing for British and German officials.
▽Ex-Rep. Joe Walsh to challenge Trump in 2020 GOP primary - Los Angeles Times
Former Rep. Joe Walsh, once a backer of President Trump, said Sunday he would mount a Republican primary challenge to the president because “we can’t take four more years of Donald Trump.”
Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” the former Illinois congressman, now a radio talk-show host, called Trump “completely unfit to be president.” He said he was launching his quixotic bid because “nobody in the Republican Party stepped up” despite what he described as deep dismay over Trump’s performance.
Thousands of items for sale on Amazon “have been declared unsafe by federal agencies, are deceptively labeled or are banned by federal regulators,” according to a Wall Street Journal investigation published Friday... The Journal’s investigation found that Amazon “exercises limited oversight over items listed by millions of third-party sellers,” and documented 4,152 individual products deemed dangerous, deceptively labeled or banned. The company pushed back with a blog post Friday describing its efforts to improve product safety and compliance - on which it says it spent $400 million last year - and calling safety “a top priority at Amazon.”
The company’s statement did not dispute the main findings of the newspaper’s investigation and the company mostly declined to comment on the specific incidents and products in the report...
▽Attack on Japanese woman criticized in S.Korea | NHK WORLD
People in South Korea are going online to post criticisms of violence following reports that a South Korean man allegedly assaulted a Japanese woman tourist... The reports say the man approached the woman walking with a friend. He reportedly followed and swore at her after she ignored him.
When she tried to film him with her mobile phone, the man allegedly pulled her hair and pushed her to the ground.
