VOA NEWS

March 23, 2017

From Washington, this is VOA news. I'm David Byrd reporting.



Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain says her country will never give in to terrorism.

Speaking outside Number 10 Downing Street following a deadly attack Wednesday near the Parliament building, May said that the British people will not give in to terrorism and will carry on their lives as normal.

"And the values our Parliament represents - democracy, freedom, human rights, the rule of law - command the admiration and respect of free people everywhere. That is why it is a target for those who reject those values."

Five people, including the attacker and a police officer, died.

The incident started when a man in an SUV overran pedestrians on the Westminster Bridge and then crashed into the fence near Parliament. The man got out of the vehicle and stabbed a policeman to death as he entered the Parliament gate, two other officers then shot the attacker.

Three pedestrians on the bridge died as a result of their injuries.

A police spokesman says at least 40 other people were injured, some suffering what doctors called "catastrophic" injuries.

Police are treating the attack as an act of terrorism.

Meanwhile, Buckingham Palace officials say Queen Elizabeth will postpone plans to open the new Scotland Yard headquarters. The palace said Wednesday night that the queen's visit, which was scheduled for Thursday, would be postponed. The change is because of security concerns raised by the attack on Parliament.

It is also expected that police will be involved with a major investigation that will occupy many officers. Prince Philip was to have joined the queen at the official opening of the new building.



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The chairman of the House Intelligence says communications of Trump transition officials and possibly the president-elect were picked up in incidental collections of U.S. monitoring in the months before Donald Trump took office.

Congressman Devin Nunes said the conversations were collected in the November to January period. That's when Trump and his aides conducted interviews to fill key positions in the new administration and the president-elect talked with foreign leaders for the first time.

Nunes said that he believed the intelligence collection was done legally, with the monitored material then widely disseminated in intelligence reports.

"I believe it was all done legally. I think it was all obtained legally. I think the question is, was it masked, you know, why was it unmasked if it was unmasked, as because it appears we have no information about additional unmaskings. And then who was on the dissemination list, and was the dissemination list so far if it was such specific information about the Trump transition."

Nunes later briefed President Trump at the White House and the president said he felt "somewhat" vindicated after talking to the congressman.

Meanwhile, Representative Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said Nunes's actions have possibly compromised an investigation into Russian interference in last year's election.

"So, I'm not sure what the point of this extraordinary process is and I have to hope that this is not part of a broader campaign by the White House aimed to deflect from the director's testimony earlier this week."

President Trump has claimed that former President Barack Obama wiretapped his New York skyscraper last year. However, FBI Director James Comey and the head of the National Security Agency said earlier this week there is no evidence to back up Trump's assertions.



President Trump's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court judge, Neil Gorsuch, told the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday that all people are equal under U.S. law.

Gorsuch, who has described himself as an originalist, told the committee his belief does not mean that he cannot rule on cases involving women, gays, lesbians or others not covered by the text of the constitution.

"I think that guarantee - equal protection of the law's guarantee in the 14th Amendment, that it took a civil war for this country to win - is maybe the most radical guarantee in all of the constitution, and maybe in all of human history."

Gorsuch also distanced himself from reports that President Donald Trump and his staff told donors they would nominate a Supreme Court justice who was pro-corporate and socially conservative.



I'm David Byrd in Washington.

That's the latest world news from VOA.