WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump on Sunday chose Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee and a loyal campaign adviser, to be his White House chief of staff, turning to a Washington insider whose friendship with the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, could help secure early legislative victories.

In selecting Mr. Priebus, Mr. Trump passed over Stephen K. Bannon, the right-wing media provocateur. But he named Mr. Bannon his senior counselor and chief West Wing strategist, signaling an embrace of the fringe ideology long advanced by Mr. Bannon and a continuing disdain for his party’s establishment.

The dual appointments — with Mr. Bannon given top billing in the official announcement — instantly created rival centers of power in the Trump White House.

Mr. Bannon’s selection demonstrated the power of grass-roots activists who backed Mr. Trump’s candidacy, some of whom have long traded in the conspiracy theories and sometimes racist messages of Breitbart News, the website that Mr. Bannon ran for much of the last decade.


The site has accused President Obama of “importing more hating Muslims”; compared Planned Parenthood’s work to the Holocaust; called Bill Kristol, the conservative commentator, a “renegade Jew”; and advised female victims of online harassment to “just log off” and stop “screwing up the internet for men,” illustrating that point with a picture of a crying child.

The grass-roots activists may be angered by the selection of Mr. Priebus as chief of staff, viewing him as a deal maker who will be too eager to push the new president toward compromise on issues like taxes, immigration, trade, health care and the environment.

In a statement Sunday afternoon, the transition team emphasized that the two men would work “as equal partners to transform the federal government.”

That simultaneous announcement is consistent with Mr. Trump’s management style in his businesses and in his campaign: creating rival power structures beneath him and encouraging them to battle it out.

It is also a reflection of who has the ear of the president-elect: his children, and especially Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner. Both of them had argued that the chief of staff job should not be held by someone too controversial, according to several people familiar with the decision-making inside the transition effort.

Mr. Kushner is likely to wield great influence over the new president regardless of whether he holds a formal title. Mr. Kushner, who has no experience in politics or government, often gets the final word in advising Mr. Trump.

But while Mr. Trump apparently feels comfortable with Mr. Priebus, the people with knowledge of his weekend decision said that Mr. Bannon was still the adviser who was better able to talk forcefully to the president-elect during difficult moments.

The transition team appeared eager to appease concerns among Mr. Trump’s most fervent supporters that choosing Mr. Priebus meant that the president-elect had already caved to the Washington “swamp” he had promised to drain. The team also wanted to mollify Mr. Bannon, and to that end, the official statement mentioned Mr. Bannon first.

“We had a very successful partnership on the campaign, one that led to victory,” Mr. Bannon said in the statement. “We will have that same partnership in working to help President-elect Trump achieve his agenda.”

Mr. Priebus said he looked forward to working with Mr. Bannon and Mr. Trump “to create an economy that works for everyone, secure our borders, repeal and replace Obamacare and destroy radical Islamic terrorism.”

Mr. Priebus is expected to have multiple deputies, including Katie Walsh, the chief of staff of the Republican National Committee, who is close to Mr. Priebus and helped ensure a tight working relationship between the party’s operational infrastructure and Mr. Trump’s campaign.

At the end of October, Donald Trump spoke in Gettysburg, Pa., and released a plan for his first 100 days in office.

The plan (below) outlines three main areas of focus: cleaning up Washington, including by imposing term limits on Congress; protecting American workers; and restoring rule of law. He also laid out his plan for working with Congress to introduce 10 pieces of legislation that would repeal Obamacare, fund the construction of a wall at the Southern border (with a provision that Mexico would reimburse the U.S.), encourage infrastructure investment, rebuild military bases, promote school choice and more.

On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell mostly made nice with Trump but also shot down or expressed little enthusiasm in some of his plans. On Trump's proposal to impose term limits on Congress, McConnell said, "It will not be on the agenda in the Senate." McConnell has been a long-standing opponent of term limits, as NPR's Susan Davis reports. "I would say we have term limits now — they're called elections."

McConnell also threw some cold water on Trump's infrastructure plans, calling it not a top priority.

McConnell did say repealing Obamacare is a "pretty high item on our agenda" along with comprehensive tax reform and achieving border security "in whatever way is the most effective." But he also declined to discuss the Senate's immigration agenda further.

"We look forward to working with him," McConnell said. "I think most of the things that he's likely to advocate we're going to be enthusiastically for."

Below is the 100-day plan Trump's campaign released in October, called "Donald Trump's Contract With The American Voter.

What follows is my 100-day action plan to Make America Great Again. It is a contract between myself and the American voter — and begins with restoring honesty, accountability and change to Washington

Therefore, on the first day of my term of office, my administration will immediately pursue the following six measures to clean up the corruption and special interest collusion in Washington, DC:

* FIRST, propose a Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress;

* SECOND, a hiring freeze on all federal employees to reduce federal workforce through attrition (exempting military, public safety, and public health);

* THIRD, a requirement that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated;

* FOURTH, a 5 year-ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service;

* FIFTH, a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government;

* SIXTH, a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections.

On the same day, I will begin taking the following 7 actions to protect American workers:

* FIRST, I will announce my intention to renegotiate NAFTA or withdraw from the deal under Article 2205

* SECOND, I will announce our withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership

* THIRD, I will direct my Secretary of the Treasury to label China a currency manipulator

* FOURTH, I will direct the Secretary of Commerce and U.S. Trade Representative to identify all foreign trading abuses that unfairly impact American workers and direct them to use every tool under American and international law to end those abuses immediately

* FIFTH, I will lift the restrictions on the production of $50 trillion dollars' worth of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal.

* SIXTH, lift the Obama-Clinton roadblocks and allow vital energy infrastructure projects, like the Keystone Pipeline, to move forward

* SEVENTH, cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the money to fix America's water and environmental infrastructure

Additionally, on the first day, I will take the following five actions to restore security and the constitutional rule of law:

* FIRST, cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama

* SECOND, begin the process of selecting a replacement for Justice Scalia from one of the 20 judges on my list, who will uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States

* THIRD, cancel all federal funding to Sanctuary Cities

* FOURTH, begin removing the more than 2 million criminal illegal immigrants from the country and cancel visas to foreign countries that won't take them back

* FIFTH, suspend immigration from terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur. All vetting of people coming into our country will be considered extreme vetting.

Next, I will work with Congress to introduce the following broader legislative measures and fight for their passage within the first 100 days of my Administration:

1. Middle Class Tax Relief And Simplification Act. An economic plan designed to grow the economy 4% per year and create at least 25 million new jobs through massive tax reduction and simplification, in combination with trade reform, regulatory relief, and lifting the restrictions on American energy. The largest tax reductions are for the middle class. A middle-class family with 2 children will get a 35% tax cut. The current number of brackets will be reduced from 7 to 3, and tax forms will likewise be greatly simplified. The business rate will be lowered from 35 to 15 percent, and the trillions of dollars of American corporate money overseas can now be brought back at a 10 percent rate.

2. End The Offshoring Act. Establishes tariffs to discourage companies from laying off their workers in order to relocate in other countries and ship their products back to the U.S. tax-free.

3. American Energy & Infrastructure Act. Leverages public-private partnerships, and private investments through tax incentives, to spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investment over 10 years. It is revenue neutral.

4. School Choice And Education Opportunity Act. Redirects education dollars to give parents the right to send their kid to the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school of their choice. Ends common core, brings education supervision to local communities. It expands vocational and technical education, and make 2 and 4-year college more affordable.

5. Repeal and Replace Obamacare Act. Fully repeals Obamacare and replaces it with Health Savings Accounts, the ability to purchase health insurance across state lines, and lets states manage Medicaid funds. Reforms will also include cutting the red tape at the FDA: there are over 4,000 drugs awaiting approval, and we especially want to speed the approval of life-saving medications.

6. Affordable Childcare and Eldercare Act. Allows Americans to deduct childcare and elder care from their taxes, incentivizes employers to provide on-side childcare services, and creates tax-free Dependent Care Savings Accounts for both young and elderly dependents, with matching contributions for low-income families.

7. End Illegal Immigration Act Fully-funds the construction of a wall on our southern border with the full understanding that the country Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such wall; establishes a 2-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after a previous deportation, and a 5-year mandatory minimum for illegally re-entering for those with felony convictions, multiple misdemeanor convictions or two or more prior deportations; also reforms visa rules to enhance penalties for overstaying and to ensure open jobs are offered to American workers first.

8. Restoring Community Safety Act. Reduces surging crime, drugs and violence by creating a Task Force On Violent Crime and increasing funding for programs that train and assist local police; increases resources for federal law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors to dismantle criminal gangs and put violent offenders behind bars.

9. Restoring National Security Act. Rebuilds our military by eliminating the defense sequester and expanding military investment; provides Veterans with the ability to receive public VA treatment or attend the private doctor of their choice; protects our vital infrastructure from cyber-attack; establishes new screening procedures for immigration to ensure those who are admitted to our country support our people and our values

10. Clean up Corruption in Washington Act. Enacts new ethics reforms to Drain the Swamp and reduce the corrupting influence of special interests on our politics.
On November 8th, Americans will be voting for this 100-day plan to restore prosperity to our economy, security to our communities, and honesty to our government.

This is my pledge to you.

And if we follow these steps, we will once more have a government of, by and for the people.

Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko has warned that Russian-backed rebels in his country’s east boast more artillery, tanks and armored vehicles than Germany’s armed forces, Ukrainian state news agency Ukrinform reported Sunday.

Although there are no official figures for the arsenal held by militants in east Ukraine, Poroshenko cited estimates from Ukrainian intelligence, whose agents have said that separatists have more tanks than either Germany or the U.K.

“I want to emphasize that the extent of reinforcement and heavy equipment which Russia continues to deploy throughout the area of the Ukrainian-Russian border—out of the government’s control—has reached such a level that the number of tanks, artillery systems, armored carriers, multi-rocket launcher systems surpasses the arsenal of the German army,” he said last week during a visit to Berlin for talks with European leaders and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

When asked to explain the president’s statement by Newsweek, his administration said Poroshenko was referring to Ukrainian intelligence figures that estimate the rebels have more than 700 tanks, more than 1,250 artillery systems, more than 1,000 armed personnel carriers, and more than 300 multi-rocket launch systems.

Neither Germany's Bundeswehrs nor its Ministry of Defense were immediately available for comment. But, according to Global Firepower’s estimates, the rebels’ arsenal does outdo Germany when it comes to its number of tanks (408) and multi-rocket systems (50).

These figures also suggest the rebels have a greater stockpile of artillery than Germany, whose army has no towed weaponry and only 154 self-propelled guns. The German armed forces, however, boast almost five times as many armored fighting vehicles (5,869).

Although Russia has denied providing separatist fighters with arms, it has not given a satisfactory explanation as to who is supplying the weapons and enabling the rebels’ control of Ukrainian territory for over two years.

Friday morning is prime time for some casual news reading, tweeting, and general Internet browsing, but you may have had some trouble accessing your usual sites and services this morning and throughout the day, from Spotify and Reddit to the New York Times and even good ol’ WIRED.com. For that, you can thank a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) that took down a big chunk of the Internet for most of the Eastern seaboard.

This morning’s attack started around 7am and was aimed at Dyn, an Internet infrastructure company headquartered in New Hampshire. That first bout was resolved after about two hours; a second attack began just before noon. In both cases, traffic to Dyn’s Internet directory servers on the East Coast of the United States was stopped by a flood of malicious requests disrupting the system. Still ongoing, the situation is a definite reminder of the fragility of the web, and the power of the forces that aim to disrupt it.

Dyn offers Domain Name System (DNS) services, essentially acting as an address book for the Internet. DNS is a system that resolves the web addresses we see every day, like https://www.WIRED.com, into the IP addresses needed to find and connect with the right servers so browsers can deliver requested content, like the story you’re reading right now. A DDoS attack overwhelms a DNS server with lookup requests, rendering it incapable of completing any. That’s what makes attacking DNS so effective; rather than targeting individual sites, an attacker can take out the entire Internet for any end user whose DNS requests route through a given server.

All of which still leaves plenty of open questions, like where the DDoS attack against Dyn originated, and how big it was. It’s possible that the attack was part of a genre of DDoS attack that infects Internet of Things devices all over the world with malware, and conscripts them into botnet armies to then coordinate, generate, and amplify malicious traffic toward a target. The source code for one of these types of botnets, called Mirai, was recently released to the public, leading to speculation that more Mirai-based DDoS attacks might crop up. Whether that’s the case with Dyn isn’t yet known.

Though there may be a hint that it was, or if not, a striking bit of irony.

Dyn’s principal data analyst Chris Baker wrote about these types of IoT-based attacks just yesterday in a blog post titled “What Is the Impact On Managed DNS Operators?”. It appears he has his answer. And that all DNS services, and their customers, should be on notice

DONALD TRUMP HAS deep ties to India’s right-wing, anti-Muslim Bharatiya Janata Party.

Trump has praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the nationalist BJP leader who gained international infamy for his role in stoking anti-Muslim riots in 2002 that reportedly killed nearly 2,000 people. The New York Times wrote that Hindu mobs skewered mothers “on swords as their children watched” while young women were raped in broad daylight, “then doused with kerosene and set on fire.”

And Shalabh “Shalli” Kumar, known as a close Modi ally and the BJP’s consigliere in U.S. politics, has emerged as a prominent backer of Trump’s candidacy. Kumar has organized multiple fundraising efforts within the Indian American community for Trump and donated $898,800 to Trump Victory, the joint fundraising committee formed to support his presidential campaign.

Trump is also in business with a prominent BJP politician, having signed a licensing deal in 2014 to construct the Trump Tower Mumbai with Mangal Prabhat Lodha, a real estate mogul and BJP state legislator. The 75-story building is now under construction, scheduled to be completed in 2018.

In many ways the partnership could not be more perfect. Like Trump, the BJP rose to power nationally two years ago by playing on sectarian anger against Muslims.

And Trump and Lodha have some things in common. Lodha is known for building golf courses and planning a gold façade at the building he is constructing. Lodha even sports a similar catchphrase, declaring on his political website his plans for “Making Mumbai Great Again.”

But Trump’s partnership with Lodha may present political complications. Lodha, like many BJP politicians, has not only antagonized Muslims, but has also repeatedly played to local anti-Christian hostility and sponsored legislation that Christian leaders say is designed to single them out for discrimination.

Neither Trump’s campaign nor Lodha’s firm responded to a request for comment.

In 2014, announcing the Trump Tower Mumbai deal, Trump praised his partner, calling the Mumbai-based firm “a truly fantastic team of professionals.” Lodha’s son, the managing director of the Lodha Group, told the New York Times that the branded approach to real estate has helped him sell condominiums; units in Trump Tower Mumbai have already sold for as much as $2 million.

Lodha came to political power in Mumbai in 1994 as Hindu activists protested over claims that Christian missionaries were entering slums and converting low-caste Hindus. In one incident, BJP activists attacked Christian converts over a dispute in Dharavi, a Mumbai slum. In another local incident, Hindus attacked a Catholic convent after accusing the school of converting a Hindu student to Christianity. Skirmishes between Christians and Muslims led to BJP activists taking to the streets to demand anti-conversion laws.

In response, Lodha has over the past two decades repeatedly pushed for anti-conversion legislation, called the Maharashtra Freedom of Religion Act, that would criminalize certain types of proselytizing.

Claiming that minority religious groups have preyed upon Hindus, Lodha’s bill deems the “threat of divine displeasure” or “social excommunication” as types of coercive proselytizing that could be punishable with a year or more of jail time. The legislation has also called for any individual seeking to change their religion to first gain approval from the District Collector, a state administrative office.

When Lodha first proposed his anti-conversion legislation, the Catholic community viewed it as a direct attack. “The Christian community is worried and concerned by the suggestion of jailing people for efforts at conversion,” the late Cardinal Simon Pimenta of Bombay wrote in 1997 in a widely circulated letter raising concerns with the legislation.

In 2013, Lodha proposed the bill again, for the fourth time, again enraging Catholics. The introduction of “such legislation will not only be an anti-minority act but will increase the persecution of the minorities,” Dolphy Dsouza, the former vice president of the All India Catholic Union and president of the Bombay Catholic Sabha, told the Hindustan Times. “Minorities such as Christians are already being harassed by authorities on false accusations of forceful conversions,” Dsouza added, “this will become another tool for harassment.”

In more recent years, Lodha has echoed claims by national BJP leaders and claimed that Muslims are waging a “Love Jihad,” marrying Hindu and Jain women so they can be converted and sold off to Islamic countries in the Middle East. “There should be one committee for each district that should work in cooperation with local police and people, and it may strictly check occurrences of ‘Love Jihad’ in their respective areas,” Lodha said.

Lodha has also enraged local Muslims by blocking cattle from being brought into Mumbai for Eid for slaughter and calling for a ban on loudspeakers over mosques. Three years ago, he led a group of 100 demonstrators who rallied at the local police station, calling for the confiscation of healthy cattle used for Eid sacrifice. Lodha has also proposed a complete ban on cattle slaughter in the entire state of Maharashtra, a state of 112 million people.

Lodha’s political party, the BJP, has used similar tactics to win elections across India. In 2014, party leader Modi decried “Muslim appeasement,” and fielded candidates in high-profile races known for stoking violence against Muslims.