Globe Trot: Emails, emails, emails

RUSSIA: The U.S. intelligence community “is confident that the Russian government directed the recent compromises of emails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavros today denied the claim.

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta accused Donald Trump’s campaign of having “advance warning” from Russians in the WikiLeaks dump. This week the organization publicized tens of thousands of Podesta’s illegally hacked emails. Some of the most damaging messages show Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon in communication with Department of Justice officers during litigation in 2015 over Clinton’s private email server.

It was Fallon who told the FBI and a congressional panel “no classified material was sent through a non-secure fax or email,” a claim ruled untrue by FBI Director James Comey.

In July, Attorney General Loretta Lynch agreed to the recommendation of Comey and other Department of Justice officials not to prosecute Clinton regarding breaches in her handling of classified and other official email.

Clinton’s fitness for the highest office in the land is questionable, but WORLD editors (including me) believe Trump is unfit for power. The recently released videotape showing Trump making lewd remarks is not new but it did give us new information about how Trump views power as a means to gratify himself.

SAUDI ARABIA: The emails also show that Clinton in 2014 sent a memo to Podesta, then a counselor to President Barack Obama, saying Saudi Arabia and Qatar are giving financial and logistical support to the Islamic State and other extremist groups. The memo, one of Clinton’s personal emails, included an eight-point plan to combat ISIS that was largely ignored, including a plan to work more closely with Kurdish allies.

COLOMBIA: Sources say key evangelical leaders quietly worked for years to bring FARC and the government to the negotiating table, but provisions on gender and sexuality in the working documents are why most in the end voted against it. I’m looking into this more.

IRAQ AND SYRIA: The number of suicide attacks (“martyrdom operations”) claimed by ISIS dipped in September to 56, which is lower than the monthly average of 87 for the first nine months of 2016.

On board the USS Eisenhower, the Top Guns are prosecuting America’s war with ISIS.

MEXICO: Take a look inside the secret lives of nuns.