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Russia has retaliated to new US sanctions by telling Washington to cut its diplomatic staff to 455 and barring the use of some properties.
The new US embassy staffing level would be the same as at Russia's embassy in Washington.
The Russian foreign ministry also said it was seizing holiday properties and a warehouse used by US diplomats.
The new US sanctions were drawn up in part to punish Russia further for annexing Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
They come months after the administration of President Barack Obama ordered the seizure of two Russian diplomatic compounds and expelled 35 Russian diplomats in response to alleged hacking of the US Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton's campaign during the 2016 presidential election.
In a statement on Friday, Russia's foreign ministry said: "The US is stubbornly taking one crudely anti-Russian step after another, using the utterly fictitious pretext of Russian interference in its internal affairs."
The US expulsion of Russian diplomats "clearly violates the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations and generally accepted diplomatic norms", it added.

Despite his party's inability to come together to pass through the legislation, McConnell pinned much of the fault on Senate Democrats.

"Our friends on the other side decided early on they didn't want to engage with us in a serious way, a serious way to help those suffering under Obamacare," McConnell said.

I used to suck the grease out of the newspaper.

This transgender thing doesn't make any sense. What is Trump thinking here? Is this some move to get Conservatives back on his side after the attack he's put on Sessions?

Dan Pfeiffer‏Verified account @danpfeiffer 5h5 hours ago
McConnell is getting emotional over his inability to take health care from millions of people. Tells you all you need to know about the man

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account
@realDonaldTrump
So great that John McCain is coming back to vote. Brave - American hero! Thank you John.
3:44 AM - 25 Jul 2017

So, if ya wanna suck on rthur Treacher newsprint, youre ok for at least 3 days in tropical weather

As it happens, was just talking with my brother about fish and chips we used to eat in London in the sixties when we were staying there.

[Jeff Flake] came to Congress in 2001 and earned a reputation as a scourge against federal spending and earmarks and as a champion of tax cuts. But he walked into a Republican Party that was descending from Goldwater and Reagan, his heroes, to Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay. When I had coffee with Flake this week, he spoke about the philosophical and political corruption of the DeLay era with uncharacteristic contempt.

Things got worse. In 2016 the Republican Party, Flake argues in the book, lost its manners. “It seems it is not enough to be conservative anymore. You have to be vicious.” And it lost its philosophy. “We become so estranged from our principles that we no longer recognize what principle is.”

Fish and chip lovers can now enjoy North Sea cod with a clear conscience, after the fishery was awarded sustainable status by the Marine Stewardship Council on Wednesday.

Stocks of cod in the North Sea were once one of the world’s great fisheries but plummeted by 84% between the early 1970s and 2006. They came perilously close to the total collapse seen in the Grand Banks fishery off Canada in the early 1990s, which has still not recovered.

But action to decommission fishing boats, ban catches in nursery areas and put larger holes in nets to allow young cod to escape has seen the stock rise fourfold since 2006. The MSC, a non-profit certification group, undertook a detailed 18-month study and has now approved the North Sea cod catch of 228 boats in Scotland and England, which represents the vast majority of the white fish fleet.

Sustainable North Sea cod will carry the MSC’s blue label and is expected in supermarkets as early as next week, with Waitrose likely to be among the first to offer the fish. North Sea cod has never been approved by the MSC in the group’s 20-year history and the MSC certification also requires fishers to protect cold water corals from damage by trawlers.