Trump: "I never worked for Russia"

Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

President Trump denied working for Russia while speaking to reporters outside the White House on Monday, responding to a New York Times story that the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into whether he was secretly "working on behalf of Russia against American interests" after the firing of FBI Director James Comey.

"I never worked for Russia. And you know that answer better than anybody. I never worked for Russia. Not only did I never work for Russia, I think it's a disgrace that you even asked that question because it's a whole big fat hoax. It's just a hoax."

Background: The White House and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo denied the Times report over the weekend, calling it "absurd" and "ludicrous," respectively. However, Trump failed to directly deny the report in an interview with Fox News' Jeanine Pirro on Saturday — the same day the Washington Post reported that he sought to hide details of his conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin from his own administration officials.

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Axios
Updated 2 hours ago - Politics & Policy

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Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

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Tropical Storm Zeta has killed at least two people, triggered flooding, downed powerlines and caused widespread outages since making landfall in Louisiana as a Category 2 hurricane on Wednesday.

The big picture: A record 11 named storms have made landfall in the U.S. this year. Zeta is the fifth named storm to do so in Louisiana in 2020, the most ever recorded. It weakened t0 a tropical storm early Thursday, as it continued to lash parts of Alabama and the Florida Panhandle with heavy rains and strong winds.

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Taiwan reaches a record 200 days with no local coronavirus cases

Catholics go through containment protocols including body-temperature measurement and hands-sanitisation before entering the Saint Christopher Parish Church, Taipei City, Taiwan, in July. Photo: Ceng Shou Yi/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Taiwan on Thursday marked no locally transmitted coronavirus cases for 200 days, as the island of 23 million people's total number of infections reported stands at 550 and the COVID-19 death toll at seven.

Why it matters: Nowhere else has reached such a milestone. While COVID-19 cases surge across the U.S. and Europe, Taiwan's last locally transmitted case was on April 12. Experts credit tightly regulated travel, early border closure, "rigorous contact tracing, technology-enforced quarantine and universal mask wearing" and the island state's previous experience with the SARS virus for the achievement, per Bloomberg.

Go deeper: As Taiwan's profile rises, so does risk of conflict with China