‘I Have a Fighting Chance.’ Rep. John Lewis Says He Has Pancreatic Cancer

(ATLANTA) — Congressman John Lewis of Georgia announced Sunday that he has stage IV pancreatic cancer, vowing he will stay in office and fight the disease with the tenacity which he fought racial discrimination and other inequalities since the civil rights era.

Lewis, the youngest and last survivor of the Big Six civil rights activists in a group once led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., said in a statement that cancer was discovered this month during a routine medical visit. He said subsequent tests confirmed the diagnosis of stage IV pancreatic cancer.

“I have been in some kind of fight — for freedom, equality, basic human rights — for nearly my entire life. I have never faced a fight quite like the one I have now,” he said in a statement.

His statement added: While I am clear-eyed about the prognosis, doctors have told me that recent medical advances have made this type of cancer treatable in many cases, that treatment options are no longer as debilitating as they once were, and that I have a fighting chance.”

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'The Issue Is Not What I Did.' Joe Biden Says He Would Not Comply With Subpoena to Testify in Trump Impeachment Trial

"The reason I wouldn’t is because it’s all designed to deal with Trump doing what he’s done his whole life: trying to take the focus off him," Joe Biden said.

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Plains, Upper Midwest brace for major winter storm barreling out of Southern California

Forecasters said the storm, which was set to push into the Plains this weekend, could dump up to a foot of snow in parts of the southern Rockies.

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US contractor killed in Iraq rocket attack, troops wounded

A U.S. defense contractor was killed and several American and Iraqi troops were wounded Friday in a rocket attack in northern Iraq, U.S. officials said. According to officials, the attack involved as many as 30 rockets fired at the Iraqi military compound near Kirkuk, where U.S. service members are also based.

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Russia and Ukraine drop mutual gas claims worth millions

The gas companies of Ukraine and Russia have agreed to drop all financial claims worth billions of pounds against each other in the latest rapprochement between the two nations bitterly divided by a separatist conflict. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said in an interview broadcast on Russian state television on Friday that the two countries are withdrawing all of their lawsuits against each other after they agreed on a gas transit deal last week. Russian gas giant Gazprom, which relies on Ukraine as its single largest transit route to Europe, last week agreed to pay out $2.9 billion (£2.2 billion) to Ukraine stemming from a previous dispute over transit fees. The parties will now withdraw all financial claims that run up millions of pounds on both sides. Ukraine, for one, has managed to secure a freeze of Gazprom’s assets in several countries such as Great Britain, Switzerland and the Netherland. Those assets will now be released. Mr Novak on Friday hailed the deal as “mutually beneficial” and said that courts would otherwise have taken years to rule on those claims. A Gazprom petrol station in Moscow “It’s a good thing,” he said in the interview. “It was important for us to start our relations with a clean slate on January 1.” The two neighboring countries have been hostile to each other since 2014 when Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and threw its weight behind separatists in eastern Ukraine. Moscow still claims the annexation of Crimea was legal and denies reports of sending troops and weapons to back the separatist rebels. Both countries have, however, been making small steps towards rapprochement since Ukraine elected its new president, former comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy in April. Mr Zelenskiy and Russian President Vladimir Putin negotiated a major prisoner exchange earlier this year and agreed at a summit meeting earlier this month to release more prisoners by the end of the year.

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Vietnam ex-minister gets life sentence in bribery case

A court in Vietnam sentenced a former communications minister to life in prison Saturday for receiving millions of dollars in bribes, as the hardline administration presses its anti-graft drive against once-powerful figures in the communist state. Nguyen Bac Son was charged alongside his then-deputy Truong Minh Tuan with receiving $3.2 million in bribes to approve the 2015 purchase of a TV firm that would have lost state-run telecommunications firm Mobifone $300 million. The two-week trial in Hanoi for the men -- once members of the powerful communist party central committee -- ended Saturday, according to state-run media Tuoi Tre.

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Fred P. Graham, Legal Affairs Reporter and Court TV Anchor, Dies at 88

By BY ROBERT D. MCFADDEN from NYT Obituaries https://ift.tt/2ZvYU3i