Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
As it turned out, it was more than a photo op. Donald Trump not only shook hands again with Kim Jong-un and became the first incumbent US president to enter North Korea but also, instead of the expected exchange of pleasantries, sat down with his counterpart and talked for an hour in the demilitarised zone (DMZ) between the Koreas. And there was a tangible outcome.
Meetings between US and North Korean working groups will restart four months after they broke down at the Hanoi summit in February. Real negotiations are back on. The question, as ever, is whether they will lead anywhere.
The US has imposed sanctions on Nicolasito, 29, who claims to be an economist and a flautist and has faced claims of nepotism
The Trump administration has slapped sanctions on the son of Nicolás Maduro, in the latest attempt to tighten the screws on Venezuela’s embattled leader.
The move by the US treasury department freezes any US assets belonging to the president’s son – Nicolás Maduro Guerra, or Nicolasito – and bars Americans from doing business with him.
Expectations are not being met in discussions with world powers, claims Iranian envoy
Iran said some progress had been made at a meeting with world powers on its nuclear accord – but probably “still not enough” to keep the landmark 2015 deal alive.
“It was a step forward, but it is still not enough and not meeting Iran’s expectations,” said Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, after the talks on Friday. “I don’t think the progress made today will be enough to stop our process – but the decision will be made in Tehran.”
US president appears to make light of 2016 scandal before meeting at G20 summit
Donald Trump has sardonically asked Vladimir Putin not to meddle in the 2020 US election, smirking and pointing his finger as he did so and appearing to make light of a scandal that led to an investigation of his campaign’s contact with the Kremlin during the 2016 election.
The US president and his Russian counterpart were heading into talks on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Japan’s western city of Osaka, their first formal face-to-face meeting since a high-profile summit in Helsinki last July.
Asked by a reporter at the G20 summit in Japan whether he would raise the issue of electoral interference during a meeting with his Russian counterpart, the US president says: 'Yes, of course I will.' He then points his finger at Putin and gives the directive twice while pointing at him and smiling, appearing to make light of
a scandal that led to a two-year investigation into his campaign's
contact with the Kremlin in 2016. Putin smiles without comment throughout
PM says ‘substantial and difficult’ issues to be resolved in standoff after speaking with Donald Trump and Xi Jinping at the G20 in Osaka
Scott Morrison says it is “unrealistic” to expect a quick resolution of the damaging trade dispute between the United States and China on Saturday at the G20 meeting in Osaka.
After conversations with Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, Morrison told travelling reporters on Friday there was a determination to resolve the standoff but he was not “naive” about how quickly the two countries would come to terms because there were “real, substantial and difficult issues to be resolved”.
Jeremy Hunt says Britain would stand with the US in the case of military intervention. How has Iraq been forgotten so quickly?
The imperial city of Persepolis, ruined capital of Persia’s kings, rises from the desert north-east of Shiraz like a rebuke to invaders, ancient and modern. Its marble columns, many still standing, were erected about 500BC when inhabitants of the British Isles were capering around in animal skins and it was Greeks who posed the biggest military threat. Donald Trump’s America was a bad idea whose time had not yet come.
Britain’s recent history with Iran is, for the most part, shaming. Nineteenth-century imperialists and traders exploited and bullied, redrawing its borders with the Raj. British armies invaded and occupied and, in the 1920s, helped to elevate Reza Shah to the peacock throne. The ensuing era of autocratic rule sowed the seeds of the anti-western 1979 Islamic revolution. At Persepolis, graffiti left by Victorian army officers still defaces its pillars.
Country may be waiting on outcome of talks setting out plans to kickstart trade with EU
Iran has held back on its threat to make its first breach of the nuclear deal and may be waiting for the outcome of talks with EU powers, China and Russia in Vienna.
At the talks on Friday the EU countries will set out plans to kickstart trade between Tehran and the bloc, one of the Iranian preconditions for sticking with the deal.
Senior adviser to Trump found no interest in his proposals for ending Israel/Palestine conflict
In the end, the ‘deal of the century’ was little more than a failed clearance sale. Jared Kushner arrived in Bahrain touting bedrock principles at untenable discounts. And even then there were no buyers.
The conference that was supposed to offer a new way out of the malaise of the Israel/Palestine conflict provided little of the sort. Its central premise of prosperity as a precursor to a lasting solution barely appeared to register on either side of the separation wall.
Plan demands Palestinians put a price on their surrender or risk losing even more ground
In the long, lamented history of Israeli-Palestinian peace plans, rarely have expectations been so low. As Jared Kushner took to the stage in Bahrain to effectively lay waste to decades of doctrine on how to solve the conflict, a solution seemed more out of reach than ever.
Kushner’s proposal has been put together by hardliners who have tossed out the rulebook and written a formula of their own serving the interests of the Israeli rightwing.
No Israelis or Palestinians present for launch of plan that shreds decades of diplomacy
The first phase of the Trump administration’s long-awaited peace plan for Israel and Palestine has been rolled out to scepticism, anger and outright derision.
A conference hall of regional officials – with no Israelis or Palestinians present – was the first to hear details of the US-brokered deal, an economic blueprint that shreds decades of diplomacy and which even its mooted financial backers seemed reluctant to embrace.
The Saudis are good customers, Trump says – which evidently outweighs the fact they murdered and carved up a Washington Post journalist
It’s that time of a presidency when every incumbent pretends to be what he isn’t, or to do what he hasn’t. With a re-election year kicking off, everyone wants to know if the candidate can fill in the gaping holes in his record, to give voters some reason to hope or believe.
Foreign ministry spokesman accuses Trump administration of destroying peace and security
Iran says the US decision to impose sanctions on its supreme leader and other top officials is “idiotic” and has permanently closed the path to diplomacy between Tehran and Washington.
Donald Trump imposed new sanctions on Monday against the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and top military chiefs, in an unprecedented step designed to increase pressure on Iran after Tehran’s downing of an unmanned American drone. Khamenei is Iran’s utmost authority who has the last say on all state matters.
Trump son-in-law’s plan, which ignores the key political issues, is dismissed as ‘a fantasy that is completely divorced from reality’
A US-designed economic blueprint for Israeli-Palestinian peace will be launched in Bahrain on Tuesday, without the participation of either Palestinian or Israeli officials.
The Palestinians are boycotting the conference and a late decision was taken not to invite Israelis. A relative handful of Palestinian business leaders are expected in Bahrain, for what is widely seen as a “vanity project” for Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
The article on journalist and advice columnist E Jean Carroll’ssexual assault allegations against President Trump mysteriously disappeared on the New York Post website on Friday afternoon; the wire story by the Associated Press was also scrubbed.
Today, CNN is reporting that former editor-in-chief Col Allan - a longtime Trump supporter and “old lieutenant of Rupert Murdoch who returned to the conservative tabloid as an adviser in early 2019” - ordered that the story be removed.
Some news: Murdoch lieutenant Col Allan ordered the removal of the New York Post's story on Jean Carroll's sexual assault allegation against Trump, sources tell me and @garveyshufflehttps://t.co/GTh4z7N2eZ
Hundreds of children were moved out of a Texas Border Patrol station where they were held with inadequate food, water and sanitation for weeks. At this station, a legal team interviewed 60 children and documented kids forced to take care of kids, no clean clothing, weeks of no baths and poor nutrition.
This morning, my office was informed that only 30 children remain in the Clint Border Patrol station in El Paso County.
Last week, @hrw lawyers found 255 children in beyond alarming conditions in the same station. pic.twitter.com/tmBC3M0aqP
JUST IN: 249 of the children are now in the ORR shelter system according to Evelyn Stauffer, a spokeswoman for the agency. https://t.co/gdhsc2GgkH
Sanctions target supreme leader and eight commanders of Iranian Revolutionary Guard
Donald Trump has ordered new sanctions against Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and other officials including eight Revolutionary Guard commanders in the latest step of an escalating pressure campaign.
Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, will also face fresh sanctions in a few days, US officials said. He negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal with the US and other major powers, and has spearheaded Iranian diplomacy since.
Targeted strike on computer-controlled weapons of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard had been planned over weeks
The US military launched a cyber-attack on Iranian weapons systems on Thursday, according to sources, as President Donald Trump backed away from plans for a more conventional strike in response to Iran’s downing of a US surveillance drone.
The hack disabled Iranian computer systems that controlled its rocket and missile launchers, two officials told the Associated Press, and were conducted with approval from Trump. A third official confirmed the broad outlines of the strike. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly about the operation.
Donald Trump has said that if Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon, it will be prosperous and have the US president as “a best friend” – but also warned that the Islamic Republic would be “obliterated” in any war between the two countries.
Officials say raids intended to target as many as 2,000 families in Houston, Chicago, Miami and Los Angeles in so-called “mass roundup”
Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard defends Joe Biden in a series of tweets calling out her rivals for criticizing him.
(3/3) …we need to find common ground with each other. That is not possible without civility. We don’t need another president who is going to continue to divide our country. We need a president who will unite us. United we stand, divided we fall.
It’s been a busy day in Washington. Here’s what’s happened so far:
Everything Trump has done in relation to Iran, driven by his duelling impulses, has kept the US on a trajectory towards conflict
Ordering airstrikes and then calling them off at the last minute is one way of working through the contradictions in your Middle East policy, but it is very expensive and highly dangerous way of going about it.
Ever since Donald Trump took office and his conflicting impulses were applied to US foreign policy, a moment like this was all but inevitable.