monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

You're having trouble understanding my point that you are inconsistent in your thinking if you choose to focus on rifles instead of handguns when it comes to mass shootings. That's called a bias. Explain how your choice of focus is not a bias when it most obviously is.

A man who is critically ill after being exposed to an unknown substance in Wiltshire is a Russian national convicted of spying for Britain, the BBC understands.

Sergei Skripal, who is 66, was granted refuge in the UK following a "spy swap" between the US and Russia in 2010.

He and a woman, 33, were found unconscious on a bench at a shopping centre in Salisbury on Sunday afternoon.

The substance has not been identified.

Police are investigating whether a crime has been committed, following the incident at the Maltings shopping centre.

Col Skripal, who is a retired Russian military intelligence officer, was jailed for 13 years in 2006 for spying for Britain.

He was convicted of passing the identities of Russian intelligence agents working undercover in Europe to the UK's Secret Intelligence Service, MI6.

Russia said Col Skripal had been paid $100,000 for the information, which he had been supplying from the 1990s.

He was one of four prisoners released by Moscow in exchange for 10 US spies in 2010, as part of a swap. Col Skripal was later flown to the UK.

He and the woman, who he knew, are both in intensive care at Salisbury District Hospital.

A number of locations in the city centre were cordoned off and the A&E department was closed as teams in full protective gear used hoses to decontaminate the street.

Neighbours at Sergei Skripal's home in Salisbury say police arrived around 17:00 GMT on Sunday and have been there ever since.

They said he was friendly and in recent years had lost his wife.

Eyewitness Freya Church told the BBC it looked like the two people had taken "something quite strong".

She said: "On the bench there was a couple, an older guy and a younger girl. She was sort of leant in on him, it looked like she had passed out maybe.

"He was doing some strange hand movements, looking up to the sky."

The BBC's security correspondent Gordon Corera said government officials were not commenting about events in Salisbury but that the possibility of an unexplained substance being involved will draw comparisons with the 2006 poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko.

Mr Litvinenko was a former intelligence officer who, an inquiry later said, was probably killed on the orders of Vladimir Putin.

In a statement on Monday evening, Wiltshire Police said the pair had no visible injuries but were found unconscious.

Temporary Assistant Chief Constable Craig Holden said: "Because we are still at the very early stages of the investigation, we are unable to ascertain whether or not a crime has taken place."

It has not been declared a counter-terrorism incident, he added.

The force is appealing for anyone with information to call them immediately on 999, adding officers do not believe there is any risk to the wider public.

Public Health England said its specialists would be joining a "specially-convened group" to consider the Salisbury incident.

Col Skripal was convicted of "high treason in the form of espionage" by Moscow's military court in August 2006. He was stripped off all his titles and awards.

He was alleged by the Russian security service (FSB) to have begun working for the British secret services while serving in the army in the 1990s.

He had been passing information classified as state secrets and been paid for the work by MI6, the FSB claimed.

Col Skripal pleaded guilty at his trial and co-operated with investigators, reports said at the time.

I was banned for over TWO ENTIRE YEARS!

In recent weeks, the Trump Organization has ordered the manufacture of new tee markers for golf courses that are emblazoned with the seal of the President of the United States. Under federal law, the seal’s use is permitted only for official government business. Misuse can be a crime.

Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg said Monday that he has been subpoenaed to appear in front of a federal grand jury investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election but that he will refuse to go.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Nunberg said he was asked to come to Washington to appear before the grand jury on Friday. He also provided a copy of what appears to be his two-page grand jury subpoena seeking documents related to President Trump and nine other people, including emails, correspondence, invoices, telephone logs, calendars and “records of any kind.”

Nunberg forwarded an email listed as coming from the office of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III seeking his appearance in front of the panel on Friday.

Among those the subpoena requests information about are departing White House communications director Hope Hicks, former White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon, Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and adviser Roger Stone.

Nunberg said he does not plan to comply with the subpoena, including either providing testimony or documents.

“Let him arrest me,” Nunberg said. “Mr. Mueller should understand I am not going in on Friday.”

Nunberg said he was planning to go on Bloomberg TV and tear up the subpoena.

The BBC has obtained leaked emails that show a lobbying effort to get US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sacked for failing to support the United Arab Emirates against regional rival Qatar.

Major Trump fundraiser and UAE-linked businessman Elliott Broidy met US President Donald Trump in October 2017 and urged him to sack Mr Tillerson, the emails reveal.

In other emails, he calls the top US diplomat "a tower of Jello", "weak" and says he "needs to be slammed".

Mr Broidy says Qatar hacked his emails.

"We have reason to believe this hack was sponsored and carried out by registered and unregistered agents of Qatar seeking to punish Mr Broidy for his strong opposition to state-sponsored terrorism," a spokesman for the businessman said.

He said some of the emails "may have been altered" but did not elaborate.

Saudi Arabia, UAE and a number of Arab countries cut diplomatic ties with Qatar in June 2017 over its alleged support for terrorism, a claim which it denies. The unprecedented move was seen as a major split between powerful Gulf countries, who are also close US allies.

Qatari officials denied the claims in a statement to the BBC.

Its communications office said: "Qatar would like to state unequivocally that it has not engaged in or committed any of the alleged accusations made falsely by Mr Broidy, nor has it engaged or paid anyone to do so.

"We believe that Mr Broidy's baseless accusations are simply a diversionary tactic to distract attention from the serious allegations against himself and his client the Government of the United Arab Emirates.

"The Government of Qatar reserves its right to taking any necessary legal action as the victim of false allegations by Mr Broidy or others."

Mr Broidy's defence company Circinus has hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts with the UAE, according to the New York Times newspaper.

He had recently returned from the UAE when he met Mr Trump at the White House in October.

According to a memorandum he prepared of the meeting, Mr Broidy urged continued support of US allies the UAE and Saudi Arabia and advised Mr Trump against getting involved in last year's row with Qatar.

Mr Broidy called Qatar "a television station with a country" - alluding to broadcaster Al Jazeera - and said it was doing "nothing positive", according to the emails.

He said he touted a regional counter-terrorism force being set up by the UAE that his company was involved with, and suggested that the US president "sit down" with Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and a top UAE military commander.

"I offered that MBZ [the crown prince] is available to come to the US very soon and preferred a quiet meeting in New York or New Jersey. President Trump agreed that a meeting with MBZ was a good idea," Mr Broidy wrote in an email.

He also said he advised the president on Mr Tillerson - who was "performing poorly and should be fired at a politically convenient time".

Mr Tillerson had criticised the blockade of Qatar and called for it to be eased, in comments that contrasted with Mr Trump's support for the move.

Mr Tillerson spent most of the first year in his position embattled and weakened.

Last autumn, in a rare move for the soft-spoken secretary, the state department held a press conference in which Mr Tillerson pushed back against reports he had called the president "a moron".

Broidy emailed a detailed account of his meeting with the president to George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman with decades of experience serving as an interlocutor between the Middle East and Washington.

Sources familiar with the investigation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is looking into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US election and possible links between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, tell the BBC that Mr Nader has become a person of interest and has been questioned in recent weeks.

Investigators questioned Mr Nader and other witnesses on whether there were any efforts by the Emiratis to buy political influence by directing money to Mr Trump's presidential campaign, according to a New York Times report.

Mr Broidy also detailed a separate sit-down with Mr Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, according to the emails.

After Mr Broidy criticised Qatar extensively to Mr Kushner, "Jared's demeanour was very passive and pleasant but he seemed to not want to engage on this issue," he wrote to Mr Nader.

Kushner Companies - owned by the family of Jared Kushner - is reported to have in April 2017 sought financing from Qatar for its flagship property at 666 5th Avenue, New York.

However, Mr Kushner has maintained that he has had no role in his family's business since joining the White House last year.

UAE ambassador to Washington Yousef al-Otaiba - who in diplomatic circles is known as the most effective and influential ambassador in Washington - has himself been a recent victim of email hacking.

It's well known in Washington that Mr Otaiba and Mr Kushner have enjoyed a close relationship.

Industry experts looking at both hacks have drawn comparisons between the two, showing reason to suspect links to Qatar.

"This is rinse and repeat on Otaiba," a source familiar with the hack told the BBC.

The UAE has also been known to use similar tactics, and was accused of hacking Qatari government websites prior to the blockade, according to the FBI.

We've provided reasons for the current focus on assault-styled weapons.

Here, let me be as clear as possible.

Anyone who obsesses about rifles being involved in mass shooting when handguns are used way more often is demonstrating their bias.

That would be a fact, and not a fallacy. In fact, interpreting the declaration of a fact as a fallacy simply because it points to your inconsistency might well qualify as a fallacy.

Such a dick this guy.