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a flurry of court filings by Mueller last week suggests that this story is false, a damaging piece of disinformation that has roiled the nation for two years.

-Michael Cohen’s lawyer dropped a bombshell on Wednesday, saying that Cohen has not been to Prague -The Steele dossier alleges that Cohen traveled to Prague during the campaign to collude with Russians -But Cohen lawyer Lanny Davis says that the dossier allegations are “false”

In a symbolic gesture on August 25, 1968, that launched the political dissident movement, eight people demonstrated on Moscow’s Red Square against the Soviet authorities sending tanks into Prague.. Most of those eight demonstrators — Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Pavel Litvinov, Viktor Fainberg, Vladimir Dremlyuga, Konstantin Babitsky, Larisa Bogoraz, Vadim Delaunay and Tatiana Bayeva — paid a high price for their protest. Gorbanevskaya, a translator and poet, and art critic Fainberg were incarcerated in psychiatric hospitals — she for two years and he for five — and forcibly treated with antipsychotic drugs. Dremlyuga, an electrician, and Delaunay, a poet, were sentenced to...

Tuesday, Aug. 21, marks the 50th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia that crushed the Prague Spring, an attempt by local reformists to establish “socialism with a human face.” More Russians have said that they approve of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 than view it as a mistake, an independent Levada Center poll has said. Czechoslovakia remained under Soviet influence for the next 20 years until change came peacefully in the 1980s. Thirty-six percent of Levada’s respondents said the decision to quash the Prague Spring was “definitely” or “rather” correct, while 19 percent said the Soviet Union...

The number of Russians residing and working in the Czech Republic has been steadily growing in recent years. Today Russians are the fourth strongest foreign minority in the country, after Vietnamese, Slovak and Ukrainian nationals. In the last decade their number rose from 23,000 to 37,000. For young Russians, Prague is an attractive city free of the constraints of the Putin regime, and a good place for business and entertainment. The language barrier is easily surmountable due to both nations speaking a Slavic language. However there is one barrier that is harder to cross and that is the stigma of...

In August 1968 Soviet tanks rolled into communist Czechoslovakia to crush a burgeoning democratic reform movement known as the Prague Spring. Here is a recap of the shock intervention that reined in the Soviet satellite state, its aspirations for democracy warded off for another 20 years. "At 11:00 pm, Soviet, Polish, East German, Bulgarian and Hungarian troops crossed the Czechoslovak border," AFP reported early on August 21, picking up Radio Prague's announcement of the overnight invasion. Tensions had been mounting between then Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and the reformist government that had taken over in the Central European state. In...

A memory stick quietly exchanged in a coffee shop. An admission of a “Hail Mary” leak. An unmistakable effort to push the Russia investigation closer to Donald Trump’s inner circle with uncorroborated tales. Those are just some of the highlights from the day that Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson — paid by Hillary Clinton’s campaign to find dirt on her GOP rival — met secretly with a top Justice Department official, right after Trump won the 2016 election. And all of it was captured in the official’s handwritten notes — a contemporaneous record that intelligence professionals tell me exposes the...

Russia has been accused of interfering in the affairs of the Czech Republic after its embassy tried to block changes to the inscription on a Soviet-era statue explaining the chequered role of Russian Marshal Ivan Konev, who was twice designated a Hero of the Soviet Union by Stalin and whose remains are buried in the Kremlin. Now the dispute is set to come to a head at a historically sensitive moment, the 50th anniversary of the 1968 invasion of then-communist Czechoslovakia by Soviet-led forces to crush the liberal Prague Spring. Critics said the original plaque exaggerated the marshalÂ’s role while...

FAISALABAD, Pakistan — The father of Imran Awan — an IT aide to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz who investigators concluded made “unauthorized access” to House servers — transferred a USB drive to a Pakistani senator and former head of a Pakistani intelligence agency, the father’s ex-business partner, Rashid Minhas, alleged. Minhas told The Daily Caller News Foundation that Imran Awan’s father, Haji Ashraf Awan, was giving data to Pakistani official Rehman Malik, and that Imran bragged he had the power to “change the U.S. president.” Asked for how he knew this, he said that on one occasion in 2008 when...

A spokesperson for the office of special counsel Robert Mueller has released a warning about the media’s “many” fake news reports regarding the investigation into President Trump and Russian collusion, reports the Washington Times. “What I have been telling all reporters is that many stories about ohur investigation have been inaccurate,” the Mueller spokesperson said. “Be very cautious about any source that claims to have knowledge about our investigation and dig deep into what they claim before reporting on it. If another outlet reports something, don’t run with it unless you have your own sourcing to back it up.” The...

'I have NEVER been there!' Trump's attorney Michael Cohen hits back at claims Robert Mueller 'has evidence he visited Prague in 2016' to meet a Putin ally Cohen hit back at McClatchy report, saying he was in LA with his son, not Prague New report claims Special Counsel has evidence of Cohen visit to Prague Steele dossier claimed he met with a close Putin ally there in late summer 2016 Cohen has vociferously denied the trip and even produced his passport Michael Cohen, the embattled personal attorney of Donald Trump, has denied fresh reports that Special Counsel Robert Mueller obtained...

President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen on Saturday responded to a report that special counsel Robert Mueller has evidence that Cohen went to Prague during the 2016 election, slamming it as “bad reporting.” “Bad reporting, bad information and bad story,” Cohen tweeted, calling out the reporter behind the story by name. “No matter how many times or ways they write it, I have never been to Prague. I was in LA with my son. Proven!”

Michael Cohen, president Trump’s personal lawyer, again on Saturday denied that he ever traveled to Prague during the 2016 election, as alleged in ex-British spy Christopher Steele’s dossier funded by the Democratic Party.Mr. Cohen tweeted in response to a McClatchy News story that said specialcounsel Robert Mueller has evidence that he traveled to Prague in August 2016. The dossier said he went there to meet with Vladimir Putin aides to supposedly discuss covering up Russian-Trump hacking into Democratic Party computers. Mr. Cohen has testified repeatedly under oath, and thus under the penalty of perjury, that he never made such a...

CNN’s Jake Tapper reported Wednesday morning that intelligence officials looked into allegations from an explosive unsubstantiated memo that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen visited Prague in late August to meet with Russian officials, and found that it was a different Michael Cohen who visited the city. Cohen strongly denied the charges Tuesday, saying that he had never been to Prague. The Washingtonian reported that two sources at the University of Southern California confirmed that Cohen was in Los Angeles at the time he was supposed to have been in Europe. Tapper seemingly confirmed Cohen’s story. “People tried to run that down...

WASHINGTON The Justice Department special counsel has evidence that Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and confidant, Michael Cohen, secretly made a late-summer trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Confirmation of the trip would lend credence to a retired British spy’s report that Cohen strategized there with a powerful Kremlin figure about Russian meddling in the U.S. election. It would also be one of the most significant developments thus far in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of whether the Trump campaign and the Kremlin worked together to help Trump win the White...

Zeman joined the Communist Party during the 1968 Prague Spring reforms. The short-lived period of greater freedom was brutally crushed by a Soviet invasion. Two years later he was purged from the party. Zeman joined the left-leaning Social Democratic party after communism fell, taking its helm in 1993. Five years later, he formed a minority government largely responsible for talks in the run-up to Czech EU accession in 2004. His failed attempt to replace Havel as president in 2003 -- in a vote won by Klaus -- led him to reconsider his priorities and retreat to a countryside house far...

Meeting in Prague, right-wing leaders from across Europe have praised Austria's anti-immigration party joining the new coalition government. The politicians are seeking to build cooperation among populists. Meeting under the banner of the Movement for a Europe of Nations and Freedoms (MENL) the conference was hosted by Tomio Okamura, whose anti-Islam and anti-EU Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) party won 10.6 percent of the Czech vote in October's parliamentary elections. "In Europe or in our country people should behave as European or he should leave," said Okamura, who was born in Japan to a Czech mother and Japanese-Korean father.  "We...

The Brits seem to do a good job of record-keeping, as far as companies are concerned. So the link above goes to a profile of Christopher Steele's company - Orbis Business Intelligence. First of all, Steele is supposed to be the "Former MI6" mastermind and general James Bond character, who accumulated the Trump pee story. In reality, he just runs a third rate political consulting company. As far as I can tell, his last post in Russia was no later than 1998...so his contacts there might be a tad bit stale. But lets look at this juggernaut of a company....

As kids, we heard the stories of Cuban political prisoners. Our family dinner table was a classroom, with my parents telling us about communism or reading the latest letter from Cuba. I grew up admiring the men and women who risked their lives to fight for freedom. Among these men were Cardinal Mindszenty of Hungary, the heroes who tried to cross the Berlin Wall, the guerrillas who fought Castro in the Escambray Mountains in the forgotten war of the 1960s that Enrique Escinosa wrote about, and those who tried reforms inside the Soviet bloc. Back in August 1968, the Rascals...

The Infant of PragueFr. William Saunders Q: My grandmother has always had a statue of Jesus as a child dressed up like a little king with a crown. She even has different outfits for him which are very elaborate. Can you tell me anything about this?From the description given in the question, the statue is one of the Infant of Prague. Devotion to the Holy Child Jesus is a long-standing tradition in our Catholic spirituality. The early Church Fathers, like St. Athanasius and St. Jerome, had a special devotion to the Holy Child Jesus. Some of the later great saints,...