An American lawyer went on a lunch date in Moscow. Now he's languishing in a jail cell in Belarus
CNN
When Youras Ziankovich, a lawyer with American citizenship, returned to his Moscow hotel after a lunch date with a friend in April, he found four men waiting for him in the street.
Ziankovich's wife, Alena Dzenisavets, says that according to the manager of the Nordic Rooms hotel, the men -- all in plain clothes -- put a hood over his head and bundled him into a car outside the hotel in the Moscow suburb of Ostankino. She told CNN that Youras was then spirited across the Russian border in a three-vehicle convoy and driven more than 700 kilometers (435 miles) to the Belarusian capital, Minsk.Senate Democrats have confirmed some of President Joe Biden’s picks for the federal bench this week in the face of President-elect Donald Trump’s calls for a total GOP blockade of judicial nominations – in part because several Republicans involved with the Trump transition process have been missing votes.
Donald Trump is considering a right-wing media personality and people who have served on his US Secret Service detail to run the agency that has been plagued by its failure to preempt two alleged assassination attempts on Trump this summer, sources familiar with the president-elect’s thinking tell CNN.