The impeachment inquiry into US President Donald Trump will be held in public next week. Ron Sachs/CNP/Bloomberg
The impeachment inquiry into US President Donald Trump will be held in public next week. Ron Sachs/CNP/Bloomberg
The impeachment inquiry into US President Donald Trump will be held in public next week. Ron Sachs/CNP/Bloomberg
The impeachment inquiry into US President Donald Trump will be held in public next week. Ron Sachs/CNP/Bloomberg

Trump impeachment inquiry hearings to be held in public


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Congressional Democrats have announced they will launch a major new phase of their impeachment inquiry next week with public hearings.

Until now, evidence over allegations that US President Donald Trump's administration withheld aid to Ukraine to force it to investigate his political rival, Joe Biden, have been held behind closed doors.

The first televised hearings will feature three State Department officials who have testified of their concerns about Mr Trump's dealings with Ukraine.

House intelligence committee chairman Adam Schiff, who is leading the impeachment investigation, announced on Wednesday that the committee would hear from top Ukraine diplomat William Taylor.

Career department official George Kent and former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch would also testify in hearings next Wednesday and Friday.

All three have already given testimony behind closed doors in the first phase of the investigation.

Ms Yovanovitch, who was sacked in May under Mr Trump's direction, told investigators she had been told to "watch my back" and that people were "looking to hurt" her.

Mr Kent and Mr Taylor testified of their concerns about her removal as the president's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, took a leading role on Ukraine policy.

Despite Mr Trump's daily denials, Mr Schiff said on Wednesday that the witnesses would show "the most important facts are largely not contested" in the inquiry.

Mr Trump, backed by Mr Giuliani, asked new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a July call to investigate Mr Biden and his family, and Ukraine's possible role in the 2016 presidential election.

The impeachment investigators are also releasing transcripts of more of the closed-door interviews this week, including Mr Taylor's evidence on Wednesday.

UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Quick%20facts
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Conflict, drought, famine

Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.

Band Aid

Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.

Sole survivors
  • Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
  • George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
  • Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
  • Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
Profile

Company: Justmop.com

Date started: December 2015

Founders: Kerem Kuyucu and Cagatay Ozcan

Sector: Technology and home services

Based: Jumeirah Lake Towers, Dubai

Size: 55 employees and 100,000 cleaning requests a month

Funding:  The company’s investors include Collective Spark, Faith Capital Holding, Oak Capital, VentureFriends, and 500 Startups. 

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