Madagascar's military takes power, fleeing president impeached
An army commander who led a mutiny in Madagascar said on Tuesday the military had taken power, after President Andry Rajoelina was impeached by lawmak...
President Joe Biden on Monday issued preemptive pardons for Gen. Mark Milley, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and members of Congress who served on the committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, using extraordinary executive prerogative as a shield against revenge by his incoming successor, Donald Trump.
The pardons, coming in the final hours of Biden’s presidency, amount to a stunning flex of presidential power that is unprecedented in recent presidential history. They serve to protect several outspoken critics of the incoming president, including former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, whom Trump has vowed retribution against.
“These are exceptional circumstances, and I cannot in good conscience do nothing,” Biden wrote in a statement, issued hours before he was set to welcome Trump to the White House for tea before attending his swearing-in. “Baseless and politically motivated investigations wreak havoc on the lives, safety and financial security of targeted individuals and their families.”
Biden had been weighing issuing the pardons in the waning days of his presidency, concerned Trump would enter office and immediately seek to prosecute his adversaries. In his statement, he spelled out his rationale, saying “alarmingly, public servants have been subjected to ongoing threats and intimidation for faithfully discharging their duties.”
The recipients of Biden’s pardons have all faced intense criticism from Trump and his allies.
Fauci served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infection Disease for decades, including during the outbreak of Covid in Trump’s first presidency, and Milley served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Trump’s first term and has warned Trump is a fascist.
Biden, in his statement, noted that the pardons did not denote guilt.
“The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense. Our nation owes these public servants a debt of gratitude for their tireless commitment to our country,” he wrote.
As he weighed preemptive pardons over the past several days, the president has made clear in conversations with aides that he does not believe those who received them were guilty of any crimes – and voiced concern that pardoning them could connote guilt, according to people familiar with the conversations.
Ultimately, Biden put aside those concerns with the view that providing protection would outweigh the potential implication of guilt.
In doing so, he is taking a step that’s unprecedented in presidential history. Preemptive pardons on such a sweeping scale have never previously been issued. When President Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor, Richard Nixon, the 37th president was facing a real threat of prosecution. None of those on Biden’s list appeared at risk of imminent legal action, but Biden believed the threat was real enough that protection was necessary.
In a statement to CNN, Milley said he and his family were “deeply grateful” for Biden’s action.
“After forty-three years of faithful service in uniform to our nation, protecting and defending the Constitution, I do not wish to spend whatever remaining time the Lord grants me fighting those who unjustly might seek retribution for perceived slights,” Milley said. “I do not want to put my family, my friends, and those with whom I served through the resulting distraction, expense, and anxiety.”
Some of those who were issued the last-minute pardons did not get a heads-up, a person familiar tells CNN.
Video from the USGS (United States Geological Survey) showed on Friday (19 September) the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii erupting and spewing lava.
At least 69 people have died and almost 150 injured following a powerful 6.9-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Cebu City in the central Visayas region of the Philippines, officials said, making it one of the country’s deadliest disasters this year.
Authorities in California have identified the dismembered body discovered in a Tesla registered to singer D4vd as 15-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez, who had been missing from Lake Elsinore since April 2024.
A tsunami threat was issued in Chile after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck the Drake Passage on Friday. The epicenter was located 135 miles south of Puerto Williams on the north coast of Navarino Island.
The war in Ukraine has reached a strategic impasse, and it seems that the conflict will not be solved by military means. This creates a path toward one of two alternatives: either a “frozen” phase that can last indefinitely or a quest for a durable political regulation.
An army commander who led a mutiny in Madagascar said on Tuesday the military had taken power, after President Andry Rajoelina was impeached by lawmakers and forced to flee the country after weeks of protests.
France will borrow a record €310 billion from financial markets next year to finance its growing public deficit and refinance maturing debt, according to figures released by Agence France Trésor (AFT) on Tuesday.
The "Azerbaijani Cartographers" Public Union has prepared a map of the Zangezur corridor based on high-quality satellite images, showing detailed geographic features across Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Iran.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy revoked the citizenship of Odesa mayor Hennadiy Trukhanov on Tuesday, which Ukraine's security service said was due to Trukhanov also being a Russian citizen.
Tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan are showing no signs of waning after a weekend of clashes on the volatile Afghan border between the security forces of the two countries.
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