World 22 Ashburton Guardian
www.guardianonline.co.nz
Saturday, December 31, 2016
■ RUSSIA
Kremlin vows retaliation The Kremlin has issued a stark warning to the United States, saying it would respond in kind to the US expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats and other sanctions following the Russian hacking of US political parties before the 2016 presidential elections. “I cannot say now what the response will be, although, as we know, there is no alternative here to the principle of reciprocity,” said Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov in a statement yesterday reported by the Interfax news service. He said that Russian President Vladimir Putin would decide the exact response. Peskov’s remarks were the culmination of a sharplyworded reaction by Russia’s establishment to the sanctions, which come at a time when Moscow is looking forward to an improvement in its ties with the US at the start of the Trump administration in three weeks. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, whose comments about President Barack Obama’s administration have grown increasingly hostile as the relationship has soured, dismissed the White House as “a group of foreign policy losers, angry and ignorant”. Zakharova’s colleague in the foreign ministry, Konstantin Dolgov, who holds the title of commissioner on democracy and human rights, called the US sanctions “counterproductive” and cast them as having “the goal of damaging rela-
Lindsay Lohan ‘desperate’
Russian President Vladimir Putin. tions and complicating their restoration in the future”. Whatever retaliation Moscow is considering will have to take into account the possibility that the Trump administration will want to restore the relationship that has foundered on differences over Syria, Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the Kremlin’s proxy war in Ukraine, and finally, the alleged hacking of on behalf of Trump in the US presidential campaign. Peskov told reporters yesterday that the steps showed President Obama’s “unpredictable and aggressive foreign policy”: “Such steps of the US administration that has three weeks left to work are aimed at two things: to further harm Russian-American ties, which are at a low point as it is, as well as, obviously, deal a blow
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on the foreign policy plans of the incoming administration of the president-elect.” Konstantin Kosachyov, a senior member of the upper house of the Russian parliament, suggested that Moscow will have to weigh its response given the possible reaction of the newly elected president. The sanctions, he said in comments carried by Interfax, represented not the will of the United States as a whole, but “the agony of political corpses of the outgoing administration”. That said, the history of diplomatic expulsions suggest that, at the very least, Russia will throw out a similar number of US embassy personnel. Zakharova and others have long warned of an “asymmetrical” response to any possible sanctions over the hacking al-
legations, so other expulsions are possible. Putin repeatedly denied Russian involvement in the US election despite the accusations from the White House, and the Kremlin has questioned the evidence for the claims. In his nationally broadcast marathon news conference last week, Putin borrowed some of President-elect Donald Trump’s dismissive rhetoric, remarking about the hacking that “Maybe it was someone lying on the couch who did it”. The Democratic Party, Putin said, is “losing on all fronts and looking elsewhere for things to blame. “In my view, this, how shall I say it, degrades their own dignity. You have to know how to lose with dignity.” - PA
■ UNITED STATES
Security ramped up at Times Square Massive 20-ton rubbish trucks, weighted with an extra 15 tons of sand, will surround the iconic New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square, officials said yesterday, describing a security measure meant to stop deadly truck-driving attacks into crowds like those in Germany and France. The placement of the 65 trucks, along with 100 patrol cars, at intersections surrounding Times Square is a new element to an already heavily policed event that will include 7000 officers, specially armed counter-terrorism units and bomb-sniffing dogs. “We live in a changing world now,” New York Police Department Commissioner James O’Neil said. “It can’t just be, ‘What happens in New York, what happens in the United States?’ It has to be more, ‘What happens worldwide?’” A Tunisian man who ploughed a truck into a Christ-
mas market in Berlin this month killed 12 people and injured 56 others. His attack followed a more deadly assault in Nice, France, in July that left 86 people dead when a man drove a 20-ton refrigerated truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day. New York police studied those events in planning their Times Square security. “As we formulated this year’s plan, we paid close attention to world events and we learned from those events,” said Carlos Gomez, the NYPD’s chief of patrol. More than 1 million people are expected to attend the annual ball drop countdown in Manhattan, and officials said they didn’t know of any terror threats. The security measures are part of augmented precautions across the nation for New Year’s Eve. To keep Las Vegas’ lavish celebration secure, the entire
Times Square police force will be working or on-call with help from the FBI, the National Guard and the Secret Service and will close roads and beef up barriers to prevent vehicle attacks. Times Square revellers, who are prohibited from carrying umbrellas and large bags, will be screened at two points:
once when they approach the Crossroads of the World and again when they enter one of the 65 pens that hold thousands of people each. And, as in past years, officials have removed all trash bins and mailboxes, sealed manhole covers and done sweeps of parking garages and hotels. Police in New York have used trucks as blocker vehicles before, though never on this scale. The sand-filled trucks were deployed in November at the Thanksgiving Day parade and on Election Day, when they were posted outside Donald Trump’s Trump Tower, at two Manhattan hotels and at a convention centre used by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Investigators also are reviewing the records of truck rental companies, said James Waters, chief of the NYPD’s counterterrorism bureau. - PA
This news is so not fetch – Lindsay Lohan is refusing to leave Mean Girls alone. The actress participated in a live Q&A session with CNN this week where she was asked about doing more comedy movies. “I have been trying so hard to do a Mean Girls 2. It is not in my hands. I know that Tina Fey, and Lorne Michaels and all of Paramount are very busy. But I will keep forcing it and pushing it on them until we do it.” Lohan starred in the 2004 comedy as Cady, a teenager who attends high school for the first time and attempts to help her geeky new friends bring down teen queen Regina George, played by Rachel McAdams.
Tribute to George Michael Chris Martin paid his tribute to George Michael - who was famously charitable by surprising a group of homeless people with a performance of Wham!’s Last Christmas. The 39-year-old stunned the group of homeless people, volunteers and staff at a Crisis shelter in west London. He performed some of his own hits as well as the popular Christmas single. During the show, he dedicated it to George Michael.
Rossum in Rotorua? American TV star Emmy Rossum has been spotted in Rotorua. The American actress and singer-songwriter posted a photo of Rotorua’s Fat Dog cafe yesterday as well as photos of her at Lake Tarawera on her Instagram account. Fat Dog owner Simon Wright said he and his staff hadn’t noticed The Phantom of the Opera star come in. “I don’t know who she is, I wouldn’t know who has been in or out, we have just been way too busy,” he said. Mr Wright said he thought it was “really cool” that she shared a photo of Fat Dog on her account. Rossums’s Instgram has more than 1.6m followers and almost 3000 posts.