For Democrats, the decisions being made of whether to support impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump are personal, gut-wrenching and, at times, starkly political, with fallout in 2020 and beyond. Some lawmakers worry impeachment will benefit the president, energizing Trump's supporters and solidifying his campaign, much the way the proceedings against Bill Clinton ended up costing Republicans in 1998. Others warn that failing to impeach Trump risks deflating Democratic voters they need to turn out in 2020.

"We always urge a sober appraisal of the situation and to wait for more or less convincing evidence to appear," Peskov said on Russian television, extracts of which were published by the RIA Novosti news agency. A Japanese and a Norwegian oil tanker were targeted in attacks on Thursday in the Gulf of Oman.

Argentina and Uruguay were left entirely without electricity on Sunday after the countries’ interconnected network failed, according to energy distributors in the region.The failure began shortly after 7am on Sunday, leaving officials scrambling to restore electricity. Much of the network had been restored by Monday morning, as Argentinia's president Mauricio Macri promised a full investigation into what caused the blackout.The power cut crippled public transportation in Buenos Aires, Argentina’s capital, and in other major cities.It also cut off the water supply, closed shops and brought down phone and internet communications across the country.“A massive failure...in the system left Argentina and Uruguay without power,” a spokesperson for energy company Edesur said in a statement. Edesur has 2.5m customers, according to its website.“If this had been a weekday, it would’ve been chaos,” said Silvio Ubermann, a Buenos Aires resident.“Sometimes there is not light in the summertime as a result of high electricity consumption, but never such a large blackout in the whole country.“I have never seen something like this.”Edenor, Argentina’s largest energy company, also tweeted about the failure, as millions woke to the blackout.“Due to a general failure in the interconnection system, Argentina and neighbouring countries are without electricity,” the energy distributor said. Several Argentine provinces were forced to temporarily delay local elections due to the blackout.The cause of the outage was still unclear as of Monday morning, but Argentina’s energy agency confirmed in a statement it had begun an investigation.EPEC, another energy company, said the outage had affected most of the country, including Córdoba and Santa Fe, as well as Buenos Aires.UTE, Uruguay’s electricity body, confirmed that the neighbouring country was affected in a statement published on Twitter.“At 7.06 a defect in the Argentine network affected the interconnected system leaving the entire national territory without service,” the organisation said.UTE said work was underway to restore power. The company added that electricity had been restored to some cities on Uruguay’s coast.More than 48m people live across Argentina and Uruguay.Users on social media, claiming to be resident in the countries, shared photographs of the blackout.Since taking office, Argentina‘s president Mauricio Macri has said that gradual austerity measures were needed to revive the country’s struggling economy.He has cut red tape and tried to reduce the government’s budget deficit by ordering job cuts and cutting utility subsidies.A spokesman for Brazil’s power system operator (ONS) said the outage had not impacted the country.Additional reporting by agencies

BEIJING/SHANGHAI, June 18 (Reuters) - The death toll from two strong earthquakes in China rose to 11 on Tuesday, with 122 people injured, state media said, adding that rescuers pulled some survivors from rubble in a part of the country that often suffers strong tremors. The quakes, roughly 30 minutes apart, hit the southwestern province of Sichuan late on Monday, with shaking felt in key regional cities, such as the provincial capital of Chengdu and the metropolis of Chongqing. People rushed into the streets and cracks were left in some buildings by the quakes, pictures posted on the social media accounts of state media showed.

The National Migration Institute said 1,000 immigration agents had been deployed