Vladimir Putin Travels to Hungary, Hoping to Capitalize on European Divisions

BUDAPEST — When President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia last paid a visit to Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban was under siege for his autocratic style, Russia was isolated for its seizure of Crimea, and both men were called xenophobes for their hard-line stance on immigration.

Two years later, as Mr. Putin landed on Thursday for his first foray into Europe in the Trump era, it was a different story. Both men feel vindicated. There is talk of lifting the economic sanctions placed on Russia for its land grab in Ukraine. Their brand of nationalism has moved from the fringe to the mainstream.

There was a note of triumphalism, even a bit of swagger, in the air.

“Putin is not in his hole anymore,” said Balazs Orban, director of research for the Szazadveg Foundation, a think tank that advises Hungary’s ruling right-wing party, Fidesz.

Even so, beneath the triumph lies a strain of uneasiness. The visit is expected to be fairly low-key, an indication of the uncertainty surrounding the new Trump administration, analysts say. President Trump’s intentions remain unclear, and the prospects of a grand bargain between Washington and the Kremlin are highly uncertain.

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In the meantime, leaders across Europe have been forced to recalculate the best way to balance pressures in the East and West. Nowhere is that challenge felt more keenly than in Central and Eastern Europe, historically torn between Russia and the West.

That means the visit is being closely scrutinized by European and global leaders. They are looking for hints of how aggressive Mr. Putin and populist leaders like Mr. Orban will be in capitalizing on this new international climate and on Mr. Trump’s stated desire for better relations with Moscow.

Many here, skeptical that the Americans and Russians will actually bridge the chasm of interests dividing them, are injecting a note of caution about the balancing act ahead for leaders like Mr. Orban and his Fidesz Party.

Andras Racz, a Russia expert and associate professor at Catholic University in Budapest, predicted that the reset in relations between the United States and Russia would result in “a brief honeymoon, but nothing else, soon overwritten by conflicting interests.”

As for Hungary, “there is no trust on the Russian side towards Orban,” Mr. Racz said. The Hungarian leader has been seen mostly as a useful tool for weakening European Union unity, he said.

And the feeling is mutual, said Balazs Orban, the researcher, who is not related to the prime minister.

“Fidesz doesn’t feel chemistry with the Russians,” he said. “They don’t think they are friends of Hungary, necessarily.”

The warmer relations of recent years, he said, had more to do with economic necessity and Hungary’s dependence on Russian energy.

Indeed, Zoltan Kovacs, Viktor Orban’s spokesman, said in an interview that both nations would treat Mr. Putin’s visit as “business as usual,” with energy policy and a Russian deal to build a nuclear power plant in Hungary at the top of the agenda.

It was not clear how significant a role, if any, the thorniest issue between Russia and the West — the sanctions imposed by the European Union and the United States after the seizure of Crimea — would play in the meeting. But Mr. Putin is clearly eager to have the sanctions lifted, and to sow divisions in the European Union on that policy and others.

Hungary may be among the nations most susceptible to Mr. Putin’s maneuvering to remove the sanctions. Mr. Orban has voted with other European nations to support them, as a show of solidarity.

When Hungary’s foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, visited Moscow last week to prepare for Mr. Putin’s visit, he described the sanctions as “counterproductive and harmful”: an indicator, some thought, of weakening Hungarian resolve.

But since then, Mr. Trump has said that it is “too early” to revisit the issue, but that he remains open to easing sanctions down the road. In separate phone conversations he had last weekend with Mr. Putin and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who strongly supports the sanctions, the subject did not even come up.

Mr. Orban’s hosting of Mr. Putin is only the first part of a busy year of global outreach. Efforts are underway to arrange a meeting with Mr. Trump — the timing and location are still under discussion — and Mr. Orban is also planning a visit to Beijing and a meeting with Turkey’s increasingly autocratic leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“Orban has collected some credits in the international sphere,” said Balazs Orban, the researcher. “He forecast everything correctly, like immigration.”

Now, seeing a potential ally in Washington to balance the one in Moscow, the prime minister intends to cash those credits. “He understands geopolitics is changing,” Mr. Orban said: The notion that all nations need to embrace globalism and “the liberal world order” is no longer automatically accepted.

Mr. Orban’s chief opposition comes from the far-right Jobbik Party. Its leader, Gabor Vona, said in an interview this week that he had “very mixed feelings about Donald J. Trump’s election,” and that he was unsure how seriously to take Mr. Trump’s talk. He said he would wait “to see what will be unfurled.”

Russia has been accused of backing fringe parties in an effort to destabilize the European Union and NATO, but Mr. Vona denied persistent rumors that Jobbik received money from the Kremlin, calling it government propaganda.

Nevertheless, Mr. Vona said Jobbik would welcome a grand bargain between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin.

“We will only be happy if relations between the U.S. and Russia improve,” he said. If that bargain includes the creation of new “spheres of influence” for Russia and the West, as Mr. Putin dearly wishes, so much the better.

In such a world, the prime minister’s spokesman, Mr. Kovacs, made clear that Hungary would be working for more latitude to pursue its own interests, even while staying in the European Union.

“We don’t want to step out of the European Union,” he said. “We want to reform it,” turning it from a “United States of Europe” into an alliance of more independent, sovereign nations whose leaders can govern without what Mr. Kovacs characterized as undue influence from the organization’s bureaucrats in Brussels.

“At the same time, we all sense there is going to be a resetting of the relationship with Moscow, and Hungary would like to be there,” Mr. Kovacs said. “It is not a bipolar world anymore. It is a multipolar world that is emerging.”

Raid in Yemen: Risky From the Start and Costly in the End

Raid in Yemen: Risky From the Start and Costly in the End

WASHINGTON — Just five days after taking office, over dinner with his newly installed secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, President Trump was presented with the first of what will be many life-or-death decisions: whether to approve a commando raid that risked the lives of American Special Operations forces and foreign civilians alike.

President Barack Obama’s national security aides had reviewed the plans for a risky attack on a small, heavily guarded brick home of a senior Qaeda collaborator in a mountainous village in a remote part of central Yemen. But Mr. Obama did not act because the Pentagon wanted to launch the attack on a moonless night and the next one would come after his term had ended.

With two of his closest advisers, Jared Kushner and Stephen K. Bannon, joining the dinner at the White House along with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., Mr. Trump approved sending in the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, hoping the raid early last Sunday would scoop up cellphones and laptop computers that could yield valuable clues about one of the world’s most dangerous terrorist groups. Vice President Mike Pence and Michael T. Flynn, the national security adviser, also attended the dinner.

As it turned out, almost everything that could go wrong did. And on Wednesday, Mr. Trump flew to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to be present as the body of the American commando killed in the raid was returned home, the first military death on the new commander in chief’s watch.

The death of Chief Petty Officer William Owens came after a chain of mishaps and misjudgments that plunged the elite commandos into a ferocious 50-minute firefight that also left three others wounded and a $75 million aircraft deliberately destroyed. There are allegations — which the Pentagon acknowledged on Wednesday night are most likely correct — that the mission also killed several civilians, including some children. The dead include, by the account of Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen, the 8-year-old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born Qaeda leader who was killed in a targeted drone strike in 2011.

Mr. Trump on Sunday hailed his first counterterrorism operation as a success, claiming the commandos captured “important intelligence that will assist the U.S. in preventing terrorism against its citizens and people around the world.” A statement by the military’s Central Command on Wednesday night that acknowledged the likelihood of civilian casualties also said that the recovered materials had provided some initial information helpful to counterterrorism analysts. The statement did not provide details.

But the mission’s casualties raise doubts about the months of detailed planning that went into the operation during the Obama administration and whether the right questions were raised before its approval. Typically, the president’s advisers lay out the risks, but Pentagon officials declined to characterize any discussions with Mr. Trump.

A senior administration official said on Wednesday night that the Defense Department had conducted a legal review of the operation that Mr. Trump approved and that a Pentagon lawyer had signed off on it.

Mr. Trump’s new national security team, led by Mr. Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and a retired general with experience in counterterrorism raids, has said that it wants to speed the decision-making when it comes to such strikes, delegating more power to lower-level officials so that the military may respond more quickly. Indeed, the Pentagon is drafting such plans to accelerate activities against the Qaeda branch in Yemen.

But doing that also raises the possibility of error. “You can mitigate risk in missions like this, but you can’t mitigate risk down to zero,” said William Wechsler, a former top counterterrorism official at the Pentagon.

In this case, the assault force of several dozen commandos, which also included elite soldiers from the United Arab Emirates, was jinxed from the start. Qaeda fighters were somehow tipped off to the stealthy advance toward the village — perhaps by the whine of American drones that local tribal leaders said were flying lower and louder than usual

Through a communications intercept, the commandos knew that the mission had been somehow compromised, but pressed on toward their target roughly five miles from where they had been flown into the area. “They kind of knew they were screwed from the beginning,” one former SEAL Team 6 official said.

With the crucial element of surprise lost, the Americans and Emiratis found themselves in a gun battle with Qaeda fighters who took up positions in other houses, a clinic, a school and a mosque, often using women and children as cover, American military officials said in interviews this week.

The commandos were taken aback when some of the women grabbed weapons and started firing, multiplying the militant firepower beyond what they had expected. The Americans called in airstrikes from helicopter gunships and fighter aircraft that helped kill some 14 Qaeda fighters, but not before an MV-22 Osprey aircraft involved in the operation experienced a “hard landing,” injuring three more American personnel on board. The Osprey, which the Marine Corps said cost $75 million, was badly damaged and had to be destroyed by an airstrike.

The raid, some details of which were first reported by The Washington Post, also destroyed much of the village of Yakla, and left senior Yemeni government officials seething. Yemen’s foreign minister, Abdul Malik Al Mekhlafi, condemned the raid on Monday in a post on his official Twitter account as “extrajudicial killings.”

Baraa Shiban, a Yemeni fellow for Reprieve, a London-based human rights group, said he spoke by phone to a tribal sheikh in the village, Jabbr Abu Soraima, who told him: “People were afraid to leave their houses because the sound of choppers and drones were all over the sky. Everyone feared of being hit by the drones or shot by the soldiers on the ground.”

After initially denying there were any civilian casualties, Pentagon officials backtracked somewhat on Sunday after reports from the Yemeni authorities begin trickling in and grisly photographs of bloody children purportedly killed in the attack appeared on social media sites affiliated with Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen.

Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said on Monday that some of the women were combatants.

The operation was the first known American-led ground mission in Yemen since December 2014, when members of SEAL Team 6 stormed a village in southern Yemen in an effort to free an American photojournalist held hostage by Al Qaeda. But the raid ended with the kidnappers killing the journalist and a South African held with him.

That mission and the raid over the weekend revealed the shortcomings of secretive military operations in Yemen. The United States was forced to withdraw the last 125 Special Operations advisers from the country in March 2015 after Houthi rebels ousted the government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the Americans’ main counterterrorism partner.

The loss of Yemen as a base for American counterterrorism training, advising and intelligence-gathering was a significant blow to blunting the advance of Al Qaeda’s branch in the country and keeping tabs on their plots. The Pentagon has tried to start rebuilding its counterterrorism operations in Yemen, however; last year, American Special Operations forces helped Emirati troops evict Qaeda fighters from the port city of Mukalla

February is going to be FREEZING! Met Office warns the Big Chill will continue until March after temperatures plummet to -10C on coldest night of year

February is going to be FREEZING! Met Office warns the Big Chill will continue until March after temperatures 

plummet to -10C on coldest night of year

• After last week's freeze, the Met Office forecast mainly milder and wetter conditions for the next two weeks
• However the chill is set to return, with temperatures to drop to as low as -10 for much of mid to late February
• It comes after 1,023 more deaths than average were recorded in the week temperatures hit -5C this January
• Today will be dry with sunny spells for much of the UK following a frosty start, with rain outbreaks in the West

A killer cold of -10C has been forecast for much of February - after the previous -5 snap caused an extra 1,000 deaths this month.

After last week's freeze, the Met Office forecast mainly wet and windy conditions for the next two weeks, with milder conditions expected for much of the British Isles.

But Government weathermen said the country is set for a fresh 'prolonged' chill in mid and late February.

February has seen temperatures plunge to at least -8C - and as low as -18C - in each of the past five years, Met Office records show. 

Met Office forecaster Emma Salter said: 'It's a big change from cold to unsettled conditions into February. A westerly flow means wet and windy spells at times, with gales possible in the North and West.

'But it looks like it turning colder again in mid and late February. The wind direction is expected to shift to a colder direction, which is from the east or north, with high pressure building.

'Wintry conditions are possible again. People should keep an eye on the forecast.'

Today's forecast suggests it will be mainly dry with sunny spells for much of the UK, with outbreaks of rain in the far West. 

Hundreds more cold weather deaths are feared in the February chill - after 1,023 more deaths than average were recorded in the week temperatures hit -5C this month.

In the week ending January 13, the most recent week for which death figures from the Office of National Statistics are available, 13,715 deaths were reported in England and Wales, up from the week's average of 12,692

ONS figures show 20 per cent of winter deaths are people aged under 75, with 11 per cent under 65. The Department of Health said cold conditions worsen winter killers including flu, chest diseases, heart attacks, strokes and dementia.

Public Health England said many cold weather deaths were preventable - blaming draughty houses' lack of insulation, inadequate heating and Brits failing to wrap up warm in chills. 

Department of Health chief medical officer Professor Dame Sally Davies, writing in the Cold Weather Plan for England, said: 'Cold-related deaths represent the biggest weather-related source of mortality. Winter sees a significant rise in deaths.'

Dr Thomas Waite, of Public Health England's extreme events team, said: 'Thousands of people die because of their exposure to cold weather. It's really important we all do everything we can to ensure everyone stays well.'

Temperatures this morning saw a big contrast between different areas of the UK, with a 20-celsius swing between Plymouth – with highs of 11C – and Cairngorm in Scotland at -9C.

The coldest night of the year so far has been recorded in Scotland, with the UK seeing a temperature difference of more than 20 degrees between north and south.

Braemar in Aberdeenshire saw temperatures dip to minus 10.1C, while the Isles of Scilly recorded 10.2C, the Met Office said.

Met Office spokeswoman Emma Sharples said Braemar was a 'well-known cold spot' due to its location in the Scottish Highlands.

'It is a valley location, so you tend to get cold air drained down into the valley,' she said.

The chilly spell did not beat the coldest night of the winter though - on Monday December 5 temperatures fell to minus 11C in Cromdale, Moray.

Snow cover in Scotland and cold air in the north helped keep temperatures low, with overnight figures of minus 3C in Edinburgh, minus 2.8C in Carlisle and minus 1.6C in Durham.

Meanwhile, temperatures hit 4.3C in Nottingham, 7.1C in Gravesend and 7.7C in Cardiff. The coldest night in January 2016 was minus 12.4C in Kinbrace, Scotland.

A spokesman from MeteoGroup said the UK could see highs of 13C (55.4F) in the coming week, as the weather gets a lot milder.

He said 'low pressure systems moving in from the Atlantic' would cause the change in temperature.

Towards the weekend and into the second week of February, the weather will 'get quite unsettled', as wind and heavy rain sweeps across the UK.

Police arrest two students – one 'of Moroccan origin' - over the murder of six people shot dead in a Quebec City mosque carnage a day after Canadian PM condemned Trump immigration ban

Police arrest two students – one 'of Moroccan origin' - over the murder of six people shot dead in a Quebec City mosque carnage a day after Canadian PM condemned Trump immigration ban 

• Two students have been arrested in Quebec for a deadly shooting at a mosque which killed six people

• Alexandre Bissonnette and Mohamed Khadir were named by local media as the suspects on Monday
• Six men aged between 39 and 60 were killed inside the Quebec City Islamic Cultural Center
• Five people are in critical condition, another 12 suffered less serious injuries and 39 escaped unharmed 
• Witnesses told how they heard shouts of 'Allahu akbar' in Quebecois accents from the masked shooters
• One suspect called police to 'confess to his crime' and was found 'with handgun and two AK-47s' in his jeep
• On Monday he led police to a house in a residential street ten minutes away from where the shooting occurred
• The attack came amid global condemnation of US President Donald Trump's Muslim travel ban
• President Trump has not commented on the Quebec attack and spent Monday morning defending his immigration ban on Twitter

Two students including one of 'Moroccan origin' have been arrested for the slaughter of six people at a Quebec mosque which came a day after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned Donald Trump's Muslim travel ban.

Alexandre Bissonnette, 27, and Mohamed Khadir were named by local media as the two suspects shortly after the attack at Quebec City Islamic Cultural Center at around 8pm on Sunday night.

The gunmen opened fire on worshipers as they prayed, shouting 'Alluhu akbar' as they sprayed the room of men with bullets.

Six men aged between 39 and 60 were killed at the scene and five remain in a critical condition in intensive care at Quebec's Hôpital de l'Enfant-Jésus. Twelve others had less serious injuries and another 39 escaped unharmed.

Khadir was arrested at the scene but Bissonnette fled in his Mitsubishi. He was arrested 15 miles away later after calling 911 to turn himself in, Le Soleil reports.  Police searched his home in the nearby suburb Cap Rouge overnight. They were seen searching Khadir's apartment on Monday. 

Both of the suspects are students at the city's Université Laval which said it would cooperate with police in 'any way' it can. 

The shooting came as protests erupted across the US in response to President Donald Trump's Muslim immigration ban which Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned earlier on Sunday. 

Quebec Police have given no suggested motive for the killings but confirmed it was being treated as an act of terror. They are also looking in to whether a pig's head left outside the mosque last year is connected to Sunday's killings.

Melania Trump has been FLOTUS for a week but has only sent this ONE tweet and follows three people

Melania Trump has been FLOTUS for a week but has only sent this ONE tweet and follows three people

Melania Trump has been First Lady of the United States for a week but has only sent out one tweet - and follows just three people.

The wife of US President Donald Trump took over the FLOTUS Twitter handle from Michelle Obama after her husband was sworn in last Friday.

But whereas The Donald has been firing out tweets almost non-stop since he became leader of the free world, Melania appears to be much more reserved.

Posting an image of Trump swearing on two bibles as he is sworn in, the Slovenia born former model added: "I am deeply honored to serve this wonderful country as First Lady!"

In the photo, Melania is seen holding the bibles and gazing at her husband.

The tweet received thousands of retweets and likes, with supporters and opponents wading in to give Melania their thoughts

One user, Shawgerald, posted: "America loves you Melania!" to which another, called GTarnutzer, responded: "UMMMMM SPEAK FOR YOURSELF NOT AMERICA WHICH INCLUDES ME, and I say....oh hell NO!!!"

And it is not just the single tweet that is interesting people.

Under the new First Lady, the Twitter account is also following just three other accounts - none of which are the White House

Vice President Mike Pence, his wife Karen Pence and Donald Trump's presidential POTUS account are the only Twitter handles followed by the account.

Michelle Obama was the first First Lady to join Twitter in her official role and did so on January 17, 2013.

At the time of her leaving the position, Obama was following 27 other accounts - the White House among them - and had sent out some 4,000 tweets.

Although she is now the new First Lady, some have expressed concern for Melania after it appeared her husband snubbed her at his inauguration.

It seemed she had not forgotten this however as by far the most shared clip from the inauguration was the moment Melania was filmed standing behind her husband as he prepared to swear his oath

Trump turns around to look behind him and Melania immediately plasters a huge smile across her face.

But when the new President turns his back on her again, the smile instantly vanishes and is replaced by a frown which had all of social media worried.

Former grammar school pupil, 21, admits manslaughter after he did nothing to help a 17-year-old girl he watched drown in the sea

Former grammar school pupil, 21, admits manslaughter after he did nothing to help a 17-year-old girl he watched drown in the sea

• Becky Morgan was found dead in the sea near Ramsgate harbour last May
• Michael Bowditch told them she fell in the water after they were kissing
• He was drunk and on drugs and failed to act because he was 'nervous', he said
• After denying murder he admitted manslaughter today and could be jailed 

A 21-year-old former grammar school pupil who did nothing to help a teenage girl as she 

drowned in the sea has been jailed for manslaughter.

Michael Bowditch, from Ramsgate, Kent, had denied murdering Becky Morgan, 17, after she was discovered dead in the water in May last year.

But he was jailed for five-and-a-half years today after he admitted manslaughter before his trial was due to start.

The court heard he was drunk and on drugs when he and Becky were kissing on the 

seafront and she fell in the water, screaming for help.

Rather than raise the alarm or attempt to save her, he ran off and continued drinking in a bar before contacting police.

The court heard that, earlier that evening, Becky had texted her mother to say she had met a guy who was 'very nice'.

The court heard that Bowditch called police just after 5am on May 1 last year, reporting that he had seen 'the death of a person' up to three hours earlier.

Police attended his aunt's home, where Bowditch was asked to accompany officers to the harbour to show them where Becky had fallen in.

When an officer asked why he had not got his phone out to raise the alarm, Bowditch replied: 'Well, that's great for you, but I was very, very nervous.'

As Bowditch and the police arrived at the scene, Becky's coat and bag were found and then Bowditch gave a tearful, expletive-ridden account of what happened.

He told the officers: 'We were both laying here. We were both laying here, she stood up. We were both f****** about and she f****** fell.

'We were f****** about and she fell off here. She wasn't talking anymore and she was screaming. I tried to get help. I couldn't get help and she asked me to.

As an officer asked him he was OK, Bowditch replied: 'No, I feel like I f****** killed her.

'She asked me to help. I couldn't get it to her. She asked me to leave and I f****** did.' 

Toxicology tests showed Bowditch had cocaine, alcohol and cannabinoids in his bloodstream, with alcohol said to have been at a 'very high level'.

In his first police interview following his arrest, Bowditch said in a statement that he and Becky were on the Harbour Arm, sitting on the ground, kissing and cuddling.

Prosecutor Simon Taylor said: 'He stated he was drunk and did not realise the significance of what had happened and went back into town where he began to sober up a little.

'When he realised the significance of the events, the police were informed. He believed this to be a tragic accident.'

Bowditch entered a plea to manslaughter on the basis he could not say how Becky came to fall in the sea, but failed to take any action to help her.

Defence counsel Oliver Saxby QC said Bowditch's 'severe intoxication' was partly to blame, and he was not thinking in a 'sensible or logical' way at the time.

Mr Saxby said: 'What happened in the early hours of that morning is, first and last, Michael Bowditch recognises, an utter tragedy for Becky Morgan, her family and friends, and nothing said on his behalf is intended to take away from that fundamental fact.'

He added: 'He cannot say precisely how she came to fall into the sea. He accepts that he was with her at the time and failed to prevent it happening.

'And he accepts that his inaction played a part in her death. Had he done something, her life could have been saved.'

Deputy senior investigating officer Detective Sergeant Fiona Mattholie said: 'Despite a comprehensive and indepth investigation by officers, there is only one person who will ever really know the full details of what happened that night to cause a 17-year-old girl to lose her life.

'Bowditch has now admitted he did play a part in her death and was guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence.

'My condolences are with Miss Morgan's family and friends and I hope this helps them in coming to terms with such a tragic turn of events and the loss of life.' 

After Becky, also from Ramsgate, was found tributes to the teenager were posted online by family and friends.

One said: 'A beautiful girl's life has been taken away. She's flying up high as an angel.

'She was a lovely girl who grew into a mature beautiful teenager.'

Another said: 'So deeply saddened to hear about Becky. Such a tragic loss for you all. My thoughts and love are with you all at this very sad time. Sending all my love to you guys.'

Armed and dangerous! Did Donald Trump's bodyguard wear FAKE hands during inauguration so he could hold a gun under his coat?

Armed and dangerous! Did Donald Trump's bodyguard wear FAKE hands during inauguration so he could hold a gun under his coat 

 Trump and Melania were surrounded by Secret Service agents in DC on Friday

 One of them, a bald man, seemed to have his hands in same position whole time

 This led to speculation they were prosthetic hands, his real hand on gun trigger 

 But images have now emerged showing the agent's hands in other positions 

 Ex-military man Adam Linehan said he was 'a human man with functional arms

Social media is awash with claims one of the Secret Service agents protecting President Donald Trump had prosthetic arms, with his real hands on the trigger of a gun under his coat.

The theory stems from analysis of video footage as President Trump, his wife Melania and son Barron went on an informal walkabout down Pennsylvania Avenue after Friday's inauguration.

The Trumps were surrounded by a phalanx of bodyguards in the standard-issue trenchcoats. 

But one of the agents came in for particular scrutiny because his arms did not appear to move and his hands remained in the same position for several long minutes.

The theory that he was holding a gun under his coat was only dispelled when emerges and 

video emerged of him moving his arms and using his hands

 :the link  of  video  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67p9J-vWK54 

On Friday there was high security as the presidential entourage of limousines traveled for more than two miles down towards the White House, occasionally getting out to greet the crowd.

The last President to be assassinated was John F Kennedy, in Dallas, in 1963 but Trump has polarized opinion in America on a scale never seen before and the Secret Service is clearly jittery about his security. 

In March 1981, only two months after his inauguration, President Ronald Reagan escaped an assassination attempt in Washington. 

White House Press Secretary James Brady was left paralyzed by a bullet from would-be assassin John Hinckley, who was released from a psychiatric hospital last year

In the footage from Friday the bald agent's eyes move constantly, scanning the crowds for signs of a potential assassin, but his arms never move once. 

His right hand is splayed out and his left hand is bunched into a fist with one finger touching the other hand's pinky.

This led to Internet speculation he was concealing a weapon under his jacket and had his real hand on the trigger.

There was even speculation that hehad a Belgian-made FN-P90 sub-machine gun under his coat.

The FN-P90, which holds 50 rounds, is used by the Secret Service's Emergency Response Teams and is small enough to tuck underneath a winter coat.

The first to discuss the agent was an anonymous writer on the gaming blog Frag Hero who wrote on Saturday: 'After yesterday's presidential inauguration, many members of the military and law enforcement community noticed something very unusual about one of Trump's bodyguards.

'The conclusion they reached was that he did indeed have tactical fake arms.

The blogger says the agent bears 'an uncanny resemblance to Hitman Agent 47', a character played by Rupert Friend in a 2015 action movie.

But the Task and Purpose website said the theory was untrue and pointed to several images taken on Friday of the same agent with his hands in different positions. 

Task and Purpose writer Adam Linehan, a former military man, points to one image of the agent getting out of a car: 'The bodyguard, In the background of the image, exits one of the vehicles in the motorcade, and adjusts his tie and coat the way a man - a human man with functional arms - does whenever he's about to appear in public.'