The conversation involving Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Rudolph W. Giuliani illustrates how President Trump’s lawyer used his private role to insert himself into diplomacy, alarming administration officials confused about whose interests he was representing.

Current headline story by Rosalind S. Helderman, Tom Hamburger, Anthony Faiola & Josh Dawsey @ WashingtonPost.com, Dec. 29, 3:32 ET

The international call came in September 2018, after months of rising tension between the United States and Venezuela, a key strategic player in South America. On one end of the line was Venezuela’s socialist president, the pariah leader of a disintegrating economywhom President Trump’s administration was seeking to isolate. On the other end: the U.S. president’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani and then-Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.).

Both were part of a shadow diplomatic effort, backed in part by private interests, aimed at engineering a negotiated exit to ease President Nicolás Maduro from power and reopen resource-rich Venezuela to business, according to people familiar with the endeavor [....]

At least 25 fighters reported killed over revenge strike against Iran-backed Kata’ib Hezbollah

By Reuters via TheGuardia.com, Dec. 30 00:34 GMT

The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has hit out at Iran after briefing Donald Trump about US strikes against a militia group in Iraq and Syria in which 25 fighters were reportedly killed.

The Pentagon said the attacks were “defensive strikes” against the Kata’ib Hezbollah militia group, which US officials said was backed by Iran, two days after a US civilian contractor was killed in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base.

“We will not stand for the Islamic Republic of Iran to take actions that put American men and women in jeopardy,” Pompeo told reporters after the briefing, which took place at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida [....]

@ BBC.com, Dec 27

The Islamic State group has released a video claiming to show the killing of 11 Christians in Nigeria.

IS said it was part of its recently declared campaign to "avenge" the death of its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi during a US raid in Syria in October.

No details were given about the victims, who were all male, but IS says they were "captured in the past weeks" in Nigeria's north-eastern Borno State. The 56-second video was produced by the IS "news agency" Amaq [....]

The new legislation eliminated the ‘stretch IRA’ provision, but not everyone is impacted

By Alessandra Malito @ Marketwatch.com, Dec. 28

The Secure Act, which was signed earlier this month, changes the way beneficiaries will receive money from inherited retirement accounts, but not everyone is in danger of a big tax hit.

The new rules say beneficiaries of qualified retirement accounts, such as individual retirement accounts and 401(k) plans, need to withdraw all of the money out of those accounts within 10 years, instead of over their life expectancy as was previously allowed. There are no required minimum distributions within that time frame, but the account balance must be zero after the 10th year [....]

Stretching the withdrawals over the beneficiary’s life expectancy — the so-called stretch IRA provision — meant paying less in taxes, whereas the new rule threatens to result in higher tax bills,

For many, the new 10-year rule drastically diminishes the chances of withdrawing assets in a tax-friendly manner (this provision alone is expected to generate about $15.7 billion in tax revenue over the next decade). But there are alternatives, said Steve Parrish, co-director of the Retirement Income Center at the American College of Financial Services [....] One option is a benefactor buying life insurance.

Take for example a grandmother [....]

Link to the trailer, which includes these quotes from members of his platoon: "he's a psychopath"; "freaking evil, man"

By Edward Wong & Catie Edmondson @ NYTimes.com, Dec. 27

• In a rare show of bipartisan unity, lawmakers aim to pass veto-proof legislation in 2020 that would punish China over its treatment of ethnic Uighur Muslims.
• The effort comes amid growing frustration with President Trump’s unwillingness to challenge China over human rights abuses, despite vivid news reports.