Tag Archives: oceania

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Feds execute warrant at Rudy Giuliani's NYC home

Federal investigators have executed search warrants at the Manhattan home and office of Rudy Giuliani, former President Donald Trump's attorney, a law enforcement official says.

The former New York City mayor has been under investigation for several years over his business dealings in Ukraine.

Details of the search were not immediately available, but it came as the Justice Department continued its investigation into the former New York City mayor and staunch Trump ally.

Investigators executed warrants on Wednesday morning (Late Wednesday or early Thursday AEST) at Mr Giuliani's home on Madison Avenue and his office on Park Avenue and seized electronic devices, a person familiar with the investigation told the AP.

The officials could not discuss the investigation publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

The AP left a message seeking comment with Mr Giuliani's lawyer, Robert Costello.

Mr Costello told the New York Times, which first reported news of the search, that agents showed up at dawn on Wednesday and castigated the raids as "legal thuggery."

"Why would you do this to anyone, let alone someone who was the associate attorney general, United States attorney, the mayor of New York City and the personal lawyer to the 45th president of the United States," he said.

Mr Giuliani himself had previously called the investigation "pure political persecution."

The federal probe into Mr Giuliani's overseas and business dealings stalled last year because of a dispute over investigative tactics as Mr Trump unsuccessfully sought re-election, and amid the lawyer's prominent role in subsequently disputing the results of the contest on Trump's behalf.

The full scope of the investigation is unclear, but it at least partly involves the Ukraine dealings, law enforcement officials have told the AP.

Giuliani was central to the then president's efforts to dig up dirt against Democratic rival Joe Biden and to press Ukraine for an investigation into Mr Biden and his son, Hunter — who himself now faces a criminal tax probe by the Justice Department.

Giuliani also sought to undermine former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who was pushed out on Mr Trump's orders, and met several times with a Ukrainian lawmaker who released edited recordings of Biden in an effort to smear him before the election.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani poses with US President Donald J. Trump at the clubhouse of Trump International Golf Club, in Bedminster Township, New Jersey

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan had pushed last year for a search warrant for records, including some of Mr Giuliani's communications, but officials in the Trump-era Justice Department would not sign off on the request, according to multiple people familiar with the investigation who insisted on anonymity to speak about an ongoing investigation.

Officials in the Deputy Attorney-General's office raised concerns about both the scope of the request, which they thought would contain communications that could be covered by legal privilege between Mr Giuliani and Mr Trump, and the method of obtaining the records, three of the people said.

The people could not discuss the investigation publicly and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity.

The Justice Department was widely expected to revisit the issue once Attorney-General Merrick Garland assumed office.

Mr Garland was confirmed last month and Deputy Attorney-General Lisa Monaco was confirmed to her position and sworn in last week.

The Justice Department requires applications for search warrants served on lawyers be approved by senior department officials.

A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The US Attorney's office in Manhattan and the FBI's New York office declined to comment on Wednesday (Thursday AEST).

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Moon landing's 'forgotten' astronaut dead at 90

Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, who piloted the ship from which Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left to make their historic first steps on the moon in 1969, has died of cancer, his family says. He was 90.

Mr Collins was part of the three-man Apollo 11 crew that effectively ended the space race between the United States and Russia and fulfilled President John F Kennedy's challenge to reach the moon by the end of the 1960s.

Though he travelled some 383,000 kilometres to the moon and came within 111 kilometres, Collins never set foot on the lunar surface like his crew-mates Aldrin and Armstrong, who died in 2012. None of the men flew in space after the Apollo 11 mission.

READ MORE: 'Forgotten' moon landings astronaut says Mars should be next space destination

"It's human nature to stretch, to go, to see, to understand," Mr Collins said on the 10th anniversary of the moon landing in 1979.

"Exploration is not a choice really — it's an imperative, and it's simply a matter of timing as to when the option is exercised."

NASA described Mr Collins, sometimes referred to as the "forgotten" astronaut of the moon landing, as the man who "piloted humanity's first voyage to the surface of another world".

https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1387447572256657414

Mr Collins spent the eight-day mission piloting the command module. While Mr Armstrong and Mr Aldrin descended to the moon's surface in the lunar lander, Eagle, he remained alone in the command module, Columbia.

GALLERY: Spectacular photos of the 'pink' supermoon

"I guess you're about the only person around that doesn't have TV coverage of the scene," Mission Control radioed Collins after the landing.

"That's all right. I don't mind a bit," he responded.

https://twitter.com/TheRealBuzz/status/1387451395461292037

On Thursday morning, Mr Collins' family released a statement mourning the passing of their beloved father and grandfather, "after a valiant battle with cancer".

"He spent his final days peacefully, with his family by his side," his relatives said.

"Mike always faced the challenges of life with grace and humility, and faced this, his final challenge, in the same way.

"We will miss him terribly. Yet we also know how lucky Mike felt to have lived the life he did.

"We will honour his wish for us to celebrate, not mourn, that life."

https://twitter.com/AstroMCollins/status/1387438495040348168

During the moon mission, Mr Collins was alone for nearly 28 hours before his fellow astronauts finished their tasks on the moon's surface and lifted off in the lunar lander.

He was responsible for re-docking the two spacecraft before the men could begin heading back to Earth.

Had something gone wrong and Mr Aldrin and Mr Armstrong been stuck on the moon's surface — a real fear — Mr Collins would have returned to Earth alone.

Though he was frequently asked if he regretted not landing on the moon, that was never an option, at least not on Apollo 11.

Mr Collins' speciality was as a command module pilot, a job he compared to being the base-camp operator on a mountain climbing expedition.

As a result, it meant he wasn't considered to take part in the July 20, 1969, landing.

"I know that I would be a liar or a fool if I said that I have the best of the three Apollo 11 seats, but I can say with truth and equanimity that I am perfectly satisfied with the one I have," he wrote in his 1974 autobiography, Carrying the Fire.

"This venture has been structured for three men, and I consider my third to be as necessary as either of the other two."

Mr Collins family asked mourners to join them in remembering the astronaut's "sharp wit, his quiet sense of purpose and his wise perspective, gained both from looking back at Earth from the vantage point of space and gazing across calm waters from the deck of his fishing boat."