Exclusive - Trump campaign had at least 18 undisclosed contacts with Russians - sources

By Ned Parker, Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Michael Flynn and other advisers to Donald Trump’s campaign were in contact with Russian officials and others with Kremlin ties in at least 18 calls and emails during the last seven months of the 2016 presidential race, current and former U.S. officials familiar with the exchanges told Reuters.

FILE PHOTO: - U.S. President Donald Trump (L-R), joined by Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Vice President Mike Pence, senior advisor Steve Bannon, Communications Director Sean Spicer and then National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, speaks by phone with Russia"s President Vladimir Putin in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S. on January 28, 2017.

The previously undisclosed interactions form part of the record now being reviewed by FBI and congressional investigators probing Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election and contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russia.

Six of the previously undisclosed contacts described to Reuters were phone calls between Sergei Kislyak, Russia's ambassador to the United States, and Trump advisers, including Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, three current and former officials said.

Conversations between Flynn and Kislyak accelerated after the Nov. 8 vote as the two discussed establishing a back channel for communication between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin that could bypass the U.S. national security bureaucracy, which both sides considered hostile to improved relations, four current U.S. officials said.

In January, the Trump White House initially denied any contacts with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign. The White House and advisers to the campaign have since confirmed four meetings between Kislyak and Trump advisers during that time.

The people who described the contacts to Reuters said they had seen no evidence of wrongdoing or collusion between the campaign and Russia in the communications reviewed so far. But the disclosure could increase the pressure on Trump and his aides to provide the FBI and Congress with a full account of interactions with Russian officials and others with links to the Kremlin during and immediately after the 2016 election.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment. Flynn's lawyer declined to comment. In Moscow, a Russian foreign ministry official declined to comment on the contacts and referred Reuters to the Trump administration.

Separately, a spokesman for the Russian embassy in Washington said: “We do not comment on our daily contacts with the local interlocutors.”

The 18 calls and electronic messages took place between April and November 2016 as hackers engaged in what U.S. intelligence concluded in January was part of a Kremlin campaign to discredit the vote and influence the outcome of the election in favour of Trump over his Democratic challenger, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.

Those discussions focused on mending U.S.-Russian economic relations strained by sanctions imposed on Moscow, cooperating in fighting Islamic State in Syria and containing a more assertive China, the sources said.

Members of the Senate and House intelligence committees have gone to the CIA and the National Security Agency to review transcripts and other documents related to contacts between Trump campaign advisers and associates and Russian officials and others with links to Putin, people with knowledge of those investigations told Reuters.

The U.S. Justice Department said on Wednesday it had appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate alleged Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential campaign and possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia. Mueller will now take charge of the FBI investigation that began last July. Trump and his aides have repeatedly denied any collusion with Russia.

'IT'S RARE'

In addition to the six phone calls involving Kislyak, the communications described to Reuters involved another 12 calls, emails or text messages between Russian officials or people considered to be close to Putin and Trump campaign advisers.

One of those contacts was by Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch and politician, according to one person with detailed knowledge of the exchange and two others familiar with the issue.

It was not clear with whom Medvedchuk was in contact within the Trump campaign but the themes included U.S.-Russia cooperation, the sources said. Putin is godfather to Medvedchuk’s daughter.

Medvedchuk denied having any contact with anyone in the Trump campaign.

"I am not acquainted with any of Donald Trump's close associates, therefore no such conversation could have taken place," he said in an email to Reuters.

In the conversations during the campaign, Russian officials emphasized a pragmatic, business-style approach and stressed to Trump associates that they could make deals by focusing on common economic and other interests and leaving contentious issues aside, the sources said.

Veterans of previous election campaigns said some contact with foreign officials during a campaign was not unusual, but the number of interactions between Trump aides and Russian officials and others with links to Putin was exceptional.

“It’s rare to have that many phone calls to foreign officials, especially to a country we consider an adversary or a hostile power,” Richard Armitage, a Republican and former deputy secretary of state, told Reuters.

FLYNN FIRED

Beyond Medvedchuk and Kislyak, the identities of the other Putin-linked participants in the contacts remain classified and the names of Trump advisers other than Flynn have been “masked” in intelligence reports on the contacts because of legal protections on their privacy as American citizens. However, officials can request that they be revealed for intelligence purposes.

U.S. and allied intelligence and law enforcement agencies routinely monitor communications and movements of Russian officials.

After Vice President Mike Pence and others had denied in January that Trump campaign representatives had any contact with Russian officials, the White House later confirmed that Kislyak had met twice with then-Senator Jeff Sessions, who later became attorney general.

Kislyak also attended an event in April where Trump said he would seek better relations with Russia. Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, also attended that event in Washington. In addition, Kislyak met with two other Trump campaign advisers in July on the sidelines of the Republican convention.

Trump fired Flynn in February after it became clear that he had falsely characterized the nature of phone conversations with Kislyak in late December - after the Nov. 8 election and just after the Obama administration announced new sanctions on Russia. Flynn offered to testify to Congress in return for immunity from prosecution but his offer was turned down by the House intelligence committee.

(Additional reporting by John Walcott in Washington, Natalia Zinets and Alessandra Prentice in Kiev and Christian Lowe in Moscow; Editing by Kevin Krolicki and Ross Colvin)

© Thomson Reuters 2017 All rights reserved

Stop Blaming the NSA for the Ransomware Attack

This April 12, 2016 file photo shows the Microsoft logo in Issy-les-Moulineaux, outside Paris, France. The cyberextortion attack hitting dozens of countries was a “perfect storm” of sorts.

BY PATRICK TUCKER

An inside look at how the intelligence community deals with the exploitable software bugs it finds.

Friday’s global ransomware attack has reignited the debate about how the U.S. intelligence community conceals or reveals knowledge about critical software bugs. As confirmed by a former NSA official, WannaCry exploited a vulnerability stockpiled by the agency and exposed in last year’s Shadow Brokers dump. But how much blame should the NSA bear for WannaCry’s rampage across 200,000-plus computers in 130 countries?

On the one hand, the intelligence community really does keep a trove of zero-day bugs. Spies need them to intercept communications — and much more, according to Michael Daniel, an Obama-era White House cybersecurity coordinator.

“Disclosing a vulnerability can mean that the U.S. forgoes an opportunity to collect crucial intelligence that could thwart a terrorist attack, stop the theft of our nation’s intellectual property, or even discover more dangerous vulnerabilities that are being used by hackers or other adversaries to exploit our networks. So automatic disclosure is not always the right policy choice,” said Daniel in an email to Defense One.

Yet the notion that the NSA simply hoards every bug it discovers is false. Since July 2011, Daniels said, representatives from various agencies and departments have periodically assembled to discuss newly discovered bugs and vulnerabilities. They vote on each one: reveal or conceal?

When the vote is to conceal, the decision will be revisited in three months to a year, depending on the bug’s attributes and, Daniels said, a wide range of surrounding factors. How dangerous could it be if a criminal gang or adversary began using it? Would the intelligence community be able to detect its use? How badly do spies need the intelligence that the bug might yield? Can they get it another way? Could they use the bug for a short period of time and then disclose it? Can it be patched?

Former NSA officials have praised the process.

“You’ve heard my deputy director say that in excess of 80-something percent of the vulnerabilities are actually disclosed — responsibly disclosed — to the vendors so that they can then actually patch and remediate for that,” Curtis Dukes, the NSA’s former deputy national manager for national security systems, said at an American Enterprise Institute event in October. “So I do believe it’s a thoughtful process that we have here in the U.S.”

Dukes said that the impetus to conceal an exploit vanishes when it is used by a criminal gang, adversarial nation, or some other malefactor.

“We may choose to restrict a vulnerability for offensive purposes,” like breaking into an adversary’s network, he said. “But that doesn’t mean we’re not also constantly looking for signs whether or not another nation-state or criminal network has actually found that same vulnerability and now are using it. As soon as we see any indications of that, then that decision immediately flips, and we move to disseminate and remediate.”

The NSA has made no comment on the bug that enabled WannaCry. But Microsoft issued a patch on March 14, even before the Shadow Brokers dump, which suggests either that the IC disclosed the bug or at least did not succeed in keeping it a secret.

The problem is that many institutions didn’t install the patch, Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote on Sunday in a blog post: “While [the patch] protected newer Windows systems and computers that had enabled Windows Update to apply this latest update, many computers remained unpatched globally. As a result, hospitals, businesses, governments, and computers at homes were affected.”

What conclusion can we draw from the WannaCry episode? For one, the NSA process for disclosing zero-days is not broken. But the decision to disclose a vulnerability is only as good as the intelligence about what different gangs or adversaries are up to. And the situation may improve, with more intelligence, better reporting from the field, and better reporting from vendors to the public.

Daniels offered a few more ways to improve the system: “In the future, I think we need to arrive at some metrics for measuring how severe and exploitable a particular vulnerability is. For example, some zero-days may require you to have physical access to a system to exploit it. That’s obviously a very different threat than one that can be exploited remotely. I think we need to have a more standardized way to assess zero-day vulnerability severity.”

Patrick Tucker is technology editor for Defense One. He’s also the author of The Naked Future: What Happens in a World That Anticipates Your Every Move? (Current, 2014). Previously, Tucker was deputy editor for The Futurist for nine years

Cannot live on air only , need money to eat also

ONCE & FOR ALL, AZMIN MUST CUT OUT THE PUS THAT PAS HAS BECOME: PAS TELLS ALL 13 REPS TO QUIT STATE GOVT IF AZMIN SACKS EXCOS – REPORT

The Selangor PAS leadership decided that all its 13 assemblymen would quit the state government if the Mentri Besar caves in to pressure from his Pakatan Harapan partners to isolate PAS. The threat, if carried out, will rock the Selangor government because it will leave the Pakatan side on the edge with only 29 assemblymen in the 56-seat state assembly. Pakatan will be only one seat away from crumbling with 14 assemblymen from DAP, 13 from PKR and two from Amanah.


The PAS decision was made at a late night meeting on Tuesday chaired by the newly appointed Selangor party chief and Sabak assemblyman Sallehen Mukhyi. Sallehen has been tasked with conveying the decision to the party’s central committee that is scheduled to meet today. The Tuesday meeting was attended by all Selangor PAS division leaders who were updated by Sallehen about the political crisis that has engulfed the state government following the Syura Council’s decision to terminate ties with PKR. Sallehen also briefed them about his meeting with Azmin during which the Mentri Besar asked the three PAS state exco members to resign. The three are Datuk Iskandar Samad, Datuk Ahmad Yunus Hairi and Zaidy Abdul Talib.


A PAS insider said the meeting did not discuss what the party would do if it exits the state government. “There are many options but it is up to the people to interpret,” said the insider. If the PAS threat materialises, the new state Opposition will comprise 13 from PAS, 11 from Umno and two Independents. There is speculation that former Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim is positioning himself to make a return and he is said to be eyeing some crossovers from the other side to make up the numbers. Ironically, the PKR political bureau was also meeting on the other side of town at the same time on Tuesday.


That meeting, chaired by its president Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, decided to order all its political appointees in Kelantan to step down with immediate effect. On calls for PAS to be axed from the Selangor government, she said it would be decided together with Azmin who is on a working trip to Brussels. The pressure on Azmin, who is also PKR deputy president, to act against PAS is growing with several DAP leaders urging him to drop PAS from his administration. There is also pressure from within PKR which is convening its national congress this weekend. The PAS Syura Council statement criticising PKR for not supporting the PAS Islamic agenda has also riled PKR members.

According to Kelantan deputy Mentri Besar Datuk Mohd Amar Nik Abdullah, PKR has about 100 political appointees holding posts as municipal councillors, constituency coordinators, penghulu and GLC board members. Guchil assemblyman Mohd Roslan Puteh is the lone PKR elected representative in Kelantan. Mohd Amar said the Kelantan government would not force the PKR appointees to resign and that it was up to them to decide.

The PKR move is seen as forcing the hand of PAS in Selangor. However, PAS has refused to budge from the Selangor government on the grounds that it is there based on the mandate won in the 2013 general election. This the second time that Selangor is battling a political crisis from within. The state government was shaken to the core two years ago when DAP and PKR ganged up to oust Khalid as Mentri Besar. His exit almost resulted in a constitutional crisis as the DAP-led camp in Pakatan and the palace engaged in a tug-of-war over who should be the next mentri besar. – ANN

Husband and wife discover they are biological twins after IVF clinic performs routine DNA test

A married couple discovered they were biological twins after getting a routine DNA test at an IVF clinic because they were struggling to conceive naturally.

The couple, who met in college, had attended the clinic in Mississippi in the hope that it would be able to help them have their own child.

But instead the doctor was forced to tell the shocked pair that they were brother and sister.

"During the process we take a DNA sample from both the male and female to get a profile of their genetic backgrounds", the doctor, whose name has been withheld to protect the patients’ identities, told the Mississippi Herald.

“It's just a routine thing and we wouldn't normally check to see if there was a relationship between the two samples, but in this case the lab assistant involved was shocked by the similarity of each profile.”

The doctor said his initial reaction was that they might be first cousins, which he said “happens sometimes” but then he noticed the very close similarities.

He checked the patient file and saw they had the same birthdays listed in the same year – 1984.

He then realised the husband and wife must be biological twins but did not know if they were already aware.

“It was a difficult subject to raise,” he said. “They burst out laughing when I asked them if they were twins.

“The husband said a lot of people remarked on the fact they shared the same birthday and looked similar but they said it was just a funny coincident and they were definitely not related.

The doctor says he continued to insist that the pair were twins and had DNA evidence to back it up, after which the wife "pleaded" with him to admit he was joking.

"I wish that I was, but they had to know the truth," he said.

The couple had met in college and hit it off due to their similar backgrounds – they had both been adopted after their parents had died.

The pair’s biological parents had died in a car crash and, due to a filing error, neither of their adopted families were told they had a twin.

According to the doctor, the husband and wife are now considering their future together but are thought to be exempt from facing criminal charges for incest due to the unusual nature of their case.

Page from the Past - Najib advised by the Gays to hate the Gays

There's a gay in the office!

The Bitches 

Malaysian prime minister: Government will not defend LGBT rights

Was alerted this morning by a Whas App message of a blog revealing an affidavit involving the divorce case between an officer in the Prime Minister's Department and his former wife.

The said officer is PM's speechwriter, Khairul Annas Jusoh. His ex-wife was Syarifah Nabila Sara bin Dato Syed Abdul Rahman.

Rings a bell?

Yes, she is the daughter of Mongolia's Honorary Consul in Malaysia Datuk Syed Abdul Rahman Alhabshi. When they got married in 2010, it was not actually a marriage between celebrities but the pomp and pageantry was close to one and dubbed the wedding of the decade.

The affidavit revealed a dark side of Dato Najib's Head of Policy and Research at the Prime Minister's Office. It will be viral in the next few days. As always, anything with S E X, normol or abnormal, will always be HOT HOT HOT ... issue.

In the affidavit posted by The Benchmark blog here, it revealed this fella has some weird sex practices. We highlight below:

The story has been circulating for quite a few years. Back in 2010, opposition blogs and portalforum  have been playing this story. Read in Milo Suam here.

We have heard of this talk for quite a while.

The then The Mall, in front of Pan Pacific where it is the gossip corner of the latest happening in UMNO, was a buzz with the lawsuit by Dato Syed Abdul Rahman against former blogger, Zaharin for his Facebook comment in 2010.

Since then, there have been an off-the-court settlement between them recently. Read here in The Star.

We've not given much heed to this talk and thought this Khairul Annas fella have gone to ISIS. But now that the affidavit is made public, it will be a headache.

Khairul started out as a Special Officer and now after Dato Mazli bin Muhammad have left PMO, he was said to have assumed the position of Direcctor of Policy and Research Division.

This man, if we can still call him such, is now addressed as Professor Dato Wira Haji Khairul Annas Jusoh. He sounded distinguish and straight like academician like BN's candidate for Sungai Limau.  

This will give be a headache on two accounts.

First, this chap was said to have known Saiful Bahri personally and brought him to meet Dato Najib with regard to allegation of being sodomised by Dato Seri Anwar Ibrahm. The opposition then accused it as a set-up.

Now that Anwar was acquited and acquital appeal by the Attorney General Office is coming on December 11 and 12 [read in FMT here], there would be a new twist coming in PKR's propaganda.

Expect Anwar to ask for postponement based on this new revelation. By right it should not, but one will never know how lawyers for Anwar can spin it into his favour and expand their conspiracy theory further to create more doubt of his homosexual inclination.

Their blog are already at it. Read Greenboc here.

Second and this is more relevant, Dato Najib has to reconsider Khairul Annas position in his office. He will have access to a lot of information, both public and confidential, that is critical to the Prime Minister.

Our wild imagination is thinking that he could run off to Anwar and leak information. You know how people of such inclination is likely to be protective of each other and behave and think alike.

Seriously, it makes Khairul a source of blackmail and a security threat to the PM. Someone need to advise PM to release him.

We are also wondering, why now the leak? SUARAM? CIA?

Sex issues makes us thinking wildly.

Najib and the allegedly gay adviser

Saiful Bukhari Azlan leads a tangled life. He claims that he met Professor Hj Khairil Annas Jusoh, the Special Officer to the Prime Minister’s Office to apply for a scholarship and that they had met just once.

Khairil, who is Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s adviser, recently went through a marriage which was alleged to be a lavender one. A lavender marriage is a sham marriage where the groom, Khairil, hides his homosexual tendencies.

Khairil, is a graduate of the International Islamic University (UIA) and it is alleged that his contemporaries in UIA were aware he was a closet homosexual. A number of his university and secondary school mates from Sekolah Alam Shah have allegedly said so.

On 30 June 2010, Khairil got married to Syarifah Nabila Sara, the daughter of Syed Abdul Rahman Alhabshi, who is the Mongolian Honorary Consul to Malaysia.

Perversely, the Mongolian Honorary Consul to Malaysia is also the father-in-law to Najib’s aide, Khairil.

A month after the lavender marriage, Syarifah Nabila rushed home to her father. She had found Khairil entertaining various men in her marital bed. Initially, Syed Abdul believed his daughter, but later changed his mind. Why?

Syarifah Nabila is now staying with her grandmother because of her father’s peculiar behavior.

Najib’s homosexual aide is linked to the bi-sexual man, Saiful, who has accused Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim of sodomising him. And this same ‘sodomy victim’, Saiful, also had a sexual relationship with the woman, Farah Azlina Latif, who was the deputy public prosecutor, in Anwar’s trial.

Syed Abdul once accused the Malaysian police of covering up crucial facts pertaining to the murder of the Mongolian model, Altantuya. He even threatened to take legal action against Malaysia. He actually mentioned Najib by name and declared that he had in his possession the photograph of Najib, Razak Baginda and Altantuya, which he had handed over to the IGP.

Where is that picture now? And why did Syed Abdul do a ‘U-turn’ during the Permatang Pauh by-election in 2008? He even went on primetime TV and declared that the allegation of Najib’s involvement with Altantuya was a downright lie. He denied he had told people so, although hundreds of people will recall him doing so.

Perhaps the man who knows more than he is willing to divulge is Khairil Annas Jusoh.

Khairil is hiding in the shadows. Are there traces of him in Saiful’s ‘behind’? How many people’s dirty secrets, has the PM’s aide under his belt?

More importantly, what is PM Najib’s relationship with this man? There is more to this than meets the eye.

The focus is on Anwar but shouldn’t it be moved to both Khairil Annas Jusoh and Najib? - Malaysia Chronicle

Taiwan man arrested over public beheading of sister

AFP | May 18, 2017

Local television quoted an eyewitness as saying the woman had knelt and pleaded for her life while neighbours screamed when they saw her severed head on the pavement.

TAIPEI: A Taiwanese man was arrested Thursday for decapitating his sister in front of horrified neighbours, a week after another killer was jailed for beheading a three-year-old girl in the street.

The brutal crimes have shocked the largely peaceful island.
The 54-year-old man, identified by his family name Lin, beheaded his sister with a kitchen knife outside their home in southern Kaohsiung city after an argument, police said.
Lin and his sister, 52, were both unmarried and lived together in southern Kaohsiung city. He had been taking care of the mentally-ill woman for many years, police added.
“She was supposed to go to the hospital this morning and they quarrelled when she refused. Lin then attacked her with a kitchen knife and severed her neck,” an officer said.

Local television quoted an eyewitness as saying the woman had knelt and pleaded for her life while neighbours screamed when they saw her severed head on the pavement.
In the previous killing of the three-year-old girl, schizophrenic Wang Ching-yu decapitated the child in public near a metro station in Taipei last year, fighting off her mother and passers-by who tried to stop him.

He escaped the death penalty in court last week.
Wang’s case sparked fresh debate over the death penalty for child killers and there were protests calling for capital punishment.

He claimed that he had hallucinated he was a Chinese emperor from Sichuan province and believed that killing the girl would bring him concubines to “carry on his family line”, local media reported.
Prosecutors called the crime extremely cold-blooded and demanded the death penalty.
But a district court sentenced Wang to life in prison due to his “mental handicap”.

Why should I care he is not from my race or Religion

Why because in Biro Tata Negara , they are taught all who are not Malays or Muslims are lesser Human beings and if it was Malay or Muslim he would not have been beaten and will be taken to hospital even for a minor headache but than again he was only an Indian. they are thought that Non-Malay lives are less valuable because they belief in a different God. this is what they are taught in their religious education also

Cop: I never thought of taking Balamurugan to hospital

Minderjeet Kaur | May 18, 2017
Police assistant investigating officer Muhammad Nabil Abd Manaf says he also didn’t inform his superiors despite a court order to take Balamurugan to hospital.

Assistant-IO-Muhamad-Nabil- Look at his cocky and careless attitude smile. I bet he or his family are UMNO members

PUTRAJAYA: A police assistant investigating officer admitted that it did not cross his mind to take detainee S Balamurugan to hospital despite being ordered to do so by the magistrate, a public hearing was told today.

Muhammad Nabil Abd Manaf said magistrate Nik Nur Amalina Mat Zaidan had instructed him to take Balamurugan to hospital as he looked unwell.
“The magistrate told me to take him to hospital verbally. But I just told my IO (investigating officer Inspector Husri) that Balamurugan’s remand was rejected. I thought his family would take him to hospital from the (police) station,” he said.
Nabil added that it had not crossed his mind to inform anyone of the court’s instruction.
Neither did he write about the court’s instruction in the police’s WhatsApp group to inform his superiors about the matter.

Nabil, 26, was speaking at the public hearing conducted by the Enforcement Agency Integrity Commission (EAIC) to determine the death of 44-year-old Balamurugan.
The incident he related occurred at the Shah Alam Magistrate’s Court on Feb 7 at about 10.30am. The remand application took five to 10 minutes.

Nabil added that he went to the Klang Utara district police headquarters at 3pm the same day and saw that Balamurugan was in the lock-up. He did not ask his superiors if Balamurugan had been taken to hospital.

“I saw him in the lock-up leaning (against a wall),” he said.
Balamurugan was arrested at Jalan Batu Belah in Klang on Feb 6 at about 6.30pm and taken to the Bandar Baru Klang police station before being transferred to the Klang Utara district police headquarters at about 11pm.

At 10am the next day, Balamurugan was taken to the Shah Alam court and then returned to the Klang Utara district police headquarters after his remand was rejected. He died there at about midnight.
In relating the events on Feb 6, Nabil said Husri sent him a phone message to take four detainees for a remand hearing at the Shah Alam court the next day.

On Feb 7, Nabil said, he went straight to the Shah Alam court and Balamurugan was walking “okay” and later sat down with his head tilted to one side.

“When his name was called by the magistrate, he was aware but seemed weak. His eyes were swollen, but he seemed OK. Maybe (he was) acting. Everyone has their own style,” Nabil added.
Asked by Bar Council lawyer Sivaraj Retinasekharan, who was present at the hearing, whether Nabil had met Balamurugan before, Nabil said he had not.

Nabil said he saw Balamurugan for the last time when he returned to the Klang Utara district police headquarters just before midnight on Feb 7.

“I was upstairs. I heard some noises and came down. I heard the officers saying Balamurugan was not moving,” he said.

The four-day hearing ended today. A second session will be held on June 5.