News brief: Big stories of the day

Pakistan's newly-elected parliament will meet for the first time today to start the process of handing over power to the new government.

President Mamnoon Hussain has summoned the maiden session of the National Assembly, the lower house, for 10 am at Parliament House here.

A former White House staffer who has written a bombshell memoir of her time serving under President Donald Trump released a secret tape Sunday of the chief of staff firing her.

Omarosa Manigault Newman said she decided to release the secret recording of John Kelly in the Situation Room -- which marks a breach of security protocols -- and recorded conversations with Trump because "this is a White House where everybody lies."

As the lawyer for adult film star Stormy Daniels, Michael Avenatti has been a persistent thorn in Donald Trump's side. 

But in the last few days, Avenatti has gone a step further, strongly suggesting he is ready to take on the president in the 2020 elections and positioning himself as someone tough enough to take on Trump in a bare-knuckles battle for the White House.

"I'm going to put Donald Trump on trial," he said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "The only question is how many jurors are we going to have in that trial."

A white supremacist rally outside the White House fizzled out Sunday after only a handful of neo-Nazis showed up and were massively outnumbered by hundreds of counter-protesters.

In an effort to avoid a repeat of the chaos of a deadly protest in Charlottesville, Virginia exactly a year ago, Washington police closed streets and threw a ring of steel across a public park to make sure the white supremacists and rowdy counter-protesters did not come into contact.

The speculation was started by the actor Idris Elba, who tweeted Sunday that "my name’s Elba, Idris Elba." 

He followed that up five hours later with "Don’t believe the HYPE..." but social media was abuzz by then. 

Elba's tweet was shared over 18,000 times and the replies had poured in.