US isn’t holding up its end of nuclear deal, North Korean envoy charges, 6 Aug 2018
North Korea’s top diplomat accused the United States of failing to live up to President Trump’s agreement with its leader, Kim Jong-un, warning on Saturday that the country would not start denuclearizing unless Washington took reciprocal actions. Speaking at a closed-door session at a regional security forum in Singapore, Ri Yong-ho, North Korea’s foreign minister, said his country had taken a series of actions toward denuclearization, such as halting nuclear and missile tests, demolishing an underground nuclear test site and dismantling a missile engine test site.
But Mr. Ri said that Washington was dragging its feet in taking corresponding measures to build mutual confidence and improve ties with Pyongyang. Such steps, Mr. Ri said, include easing sanctions and declaring an end to the 1950-53 Korean War as a prelude to negotiating a formal peace treaty to replace the armistice that halted the war 65 years ago. Click here to read...
President admits focus of Trump Tower meeting was getting dirt on Clinton, 5 Aug 2018
President Trump said on Sunday that a Trump Tower meeting between top campaign aides and a Kremlin-connected lawyer was designed to “get information on an opponent” — the starkest acknowledgment yet that a statement he dictated last year about the encounter was misleading. Mr. Trump made the comment in a tweet on Sunday morning that was intended to be a defense of the June 2016 meeting and the role his son Donald Trump Jr. played in hosting it. The president claimed that it was “totally legal” and of the sort “done all the time in politics.”
But the tweet also served as an admission that the Trump team had not been forthrfight when Donald Trump Jr. issued a statement in July 2017 saying that the meeting had been primarily about the adoption of Russian children. Click here to read...
New Mexico suspect was ‘training children for school shootings’, 9 Aug 2018
A man arrested at a compound in Amalia, New Mexico, was reportedly training children in the use of weapons to be used in school shootings, according to prosecutors. Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, 39, was taken into custody on Saturday along with four other adults, after police raided the isolated compound, rescuing 11 malnourished children being held in squalid conditions.
A foster parent of one of the rescued children told prosecutors that the child claimed Wahhaj had been training them in the use of assault rifles “in preparation for future school shootings”, the Taos News reports. “He [Wahhaj] poses a great danger to the children found on the property as well as a threat to the community as a whole due to the presence of firearms and his intent to use these firearms in a violent and illegal manner,” prosecutor Timothy Hasson said. Click here to read...
US to impose sanctions on Russia over Novichok attack in UK, 9 Aug 2018
The Trump administration has announced a new round of sanctions against Russia, in response to the Salisbury nerve agent attack that targeted former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in March.
The administration has been forced to impose the new sanctions under the Chemical and Biological Weapons (CBW) Control and Warfare Elimination Act, which mandates that exports of equipment deemed to be sensitive on national security grounds to countries using chemical weapons are frozen. The list of products includes items such as “gas turbine engines, integrated circuits, and calibration equipment used in avionics”, which account for “about half of US exports to Russia”, The Guardian reports. Click here to read...
Trump’s lawyers counter Mueller’s interview offer, seeking a narrower scope, 8 Aug 2018
President Trump’s lawyers rejected the special counsel’s latest terms for an interview in the Russia investigation, countering on Wednesday with an offer that suggested a narrow path for answering questions, people familiar with the matter said.
Jay Sekulow, one of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers, confirmed that a response was sent but declined to comment on its content. Noting the documents that the White House has already provided, the president’s lead lawyer in the case, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said, “We’re restating what we have been saying for months: It is time for the Office of Special Counsel to conclude its inquiry without further delay.” Click here to read...
Republicans gird for House battle as Ohio and Kansas races remain close, 8 Aug 2018
Alarmed by the tight race for a congressional seat in Ohio, Republicans are steeling for a 90-day campaign of trench warfare as they fight to keep control of the House, pinning their hopes on well-funded outside groups and a slashing negative message about Democrats.
Voting across the Midwest and West laid bare the party’s precarious situation on Wednesday: Ohio’s special election exposed deep vulnerabilities in the historically conservative suburbs of Columbus, and the Republican candidate there held a slim lead over his Democratic challenger. In Kansas, a nomination fight for governor also remained too close to call the day after the primary, with a hard-right candidate threatening to topple the state’s Republican incumbent and splinter the party down ballot. Click here to read...
Donald Trump sets goal to create US military Space Force by 2020, 10 Aug 2018
US President Donald Trump's administration has set a goal of creating a sixth branch of the US military by 2020 known as the Space Force and says it will work to build bipartisan support in Congress for the plan.
Critics view the creation of a Space Force as an unnecessary and expensive bureaucratic endeavour and scoff at comparisons to the establishment of the Air Force in 1947. The Space Force would be responsible for a range of crucial space-based US military capabilities, which include everything from satellites enabling the Global Positioning System (GPS) to sensors that help track missile launches.
US Vice-President Mike Pence, in a Pentagon address, described the Space Force as "an idea whose time has come". Click here to read...
US tariffs: Steel Ministry in discussions with industry on revised proposal to sort out issue, 7 Aug 2018
With India deferring imposition of retaliatory duties on US goods till mid-September, the Steel Ministry is in consultation with the industry to arrive at a broadly acceptable “compromise proposal” to settle the issue of penal tariffs imposed by Washington on import of steel and aluminium from the country.
“There is confusion in our industry on how the contentious issue of tariffs on aluminium and steel should be settled as the US is unwilling to roll back its decision in its entirety. There is a possibility that the US could agree not to impose the additional tariffs on imports within a quota limit. However, there is no agreement within the industry on the minimum quota that should be acceptable to India,” a government official told Business Line .
In March, the Trump regime imposed additional import duties of 25 per cent and 10 per cent on steel and aluminium respectively on a number of trading partners including India, China, the EU, Canada, Japan, South Korea and Mexico citing national security concerns. Click here to read...
RUSSIA
Color Revolution in the Caucasus rattles Russian leaders, 8 Aug 2018
No two ‘color revolutions’ have been the same, although the anatomy may bear similarity. This explains why Russia continues to face a problem in calibrating its response to emerging revolutionary tides in its backyard. Russia fumbled in Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2004 and 2014), but digested the color revolutions in Kyrgyzstan in 2005 and 2010. Of course, circumstances were different: Kyrgyzstan is a landlocked country. The Moscow elite’s eternal dilemma has been that, when the defining moment came, the West invariably injected geo-politics into color revolutions in the post-Soviet space in a concerted strategy to encircle Russia with an arc of hostile states.
In this complex backdrop of historical uncertainty, Russia is unsure whether it made an error of judgment apropos the ‘Velvet Revolution’ in Armenia, which shot a 42-year-old former journalist and previously uninspiring opposition politician, Nikol Pashinyan, to power. After a meteoric three-week rise he became prime minister in May. Click here to read...
China, Russia prepare for strategic security talks in Moscow as pressure from United States grows, 9 Aug 2018
A senior Chinese diplomat will visit Moscow next week amid rising tensions on the global stage, after the United States announced fresh sanctions against Russia, and Beijing and Washington remain locked in a trade war. Yang Jiechi, a member of China’s Communist Party Politburo, will be in Russia from Tuesday to Friday to take part in the latest round of the China-Russia strategic security consultation, China’s foreign ministry said on Thursday. He will co-chair the meeting with Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia’s Security Council, Xinhua reported.
Patrushev said earlier that Yang – a former state counselor in charge of China’s foreign policy – was also expected to meet President Vladimir Putin during his four-day trip, Russian news agency TASS reported. Click here to read...
Russia likens US sanctions to economic war — and threatens response ‘by other means’, 10 Aug 2018
Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev reportedly warned the US on Friday that sanctions it plans to impose against Moscow over the nerve-agent attack of a former spy living in Britain could be treated as a declaration of an economic war. Speaking during a trip to the Kamchatka region of Russia, Reuters reported Medvedev as saying, “I would not like to comment on talks about future sanctions, but I can say one thing: If some ban on banks’ operations or on their use of one or another currency follows, it would be possible to clearly call it a declaration of economic war.” “And it would be necessary, it would be needed to react to this war economically, politically, or, if needed, by other means. And our American friends need to understand this,” he added. Click here to read...
Russia, Pakistan discuss military cooperation, 9 Aug 2018
Chief of the Russian Armed Forces’ General Staff, Army General Valery Gerasimov, and Pakistan’s General Zubair Hayat, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, met on Thursday in Moscow to discuss prospects for bilateral military and military-technical cooperation, the Russian Defense Ministry reports. The two top military exchanged opinions “on issues of regional security, the current state and prospects for bilateral cooperation on the military and military-technical trajectories,” the ministry said. It said Gerasimov had thanked Hayat for the participation of Pakistani teams in the 2018 International Army Games, stressing that they had demonstrated high skills and the will to win. The meeting “confirmed a bid to deepen the dialogue and develop contacts in the defense sector,” the ministry said.
Earlier the same issues were in the focus of attention when Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin met with the Pakistani leadership during his visit to Pakistan on August 6-7. Click here to read...
Russia War Games as Kremlin warship engages in cat-and-mouse exercise with US submarine, 10 Aug 2018
Kremlin sources said the frigate Admiral Essen tracked down and stalked the US sub in April as fears of all-out war in the region grew with Britain, the US and France carrying out joint airstrikes against the Syrian regime. According to the sources, the Admiral Essen from the Russian Black Sea Fleet homed in on an Ohio-class submarine during its Mediterranean deployment between March and June. The pursuit lasted for more than two hours and the Russians claim the ship recorded the basic parameters of the US submarine.
Izvestia newspaper speculated the submarine might have been the cruise missile-carrying USS Georgia. Vladimir Ambartsumyan, who once served as a commander on the naval brigade within the Russian Northern Fleet, told Izvestia that even locating a submarine in the sea was a great success. Click here to read...
Russia’s Ilyushin aircraft maker to spend some 3.5 bn rubles to modernize An-124 jet, 10 Aug 2018
Russia’s Ilyushin aircraft maker plans to create the modernized version of the Antonov An-124 heavy-lift transport plane at the cost of almost 3.5 bn rubles (over $52.5 million at the current exchange rate), the company said in its annual procurement plan for 2018. According to the document, posted on the state procurement web portal, the contract is to be fulfilled by December 2021 and envisages research and development work to upgrade the An-124-100 (VTA) version of the plane to the An-124-100M (VTA) version, and subsequent trials.
The An-124 Ruslan is a Soviet and later a Ukrainian heavy long-range turbojet transport plane with a maximum lifting capacity of 120 tonnes. It develops a maximum speed of 865 km/h and has a flight range of 4,800 km at full load. According to open sources, the Russian Aerospace Force currently operates nine An-124 planes and 10 more Ruslan aircraft are used in Russia’s Volga-Dnepr airline. Click here to read...
AFRICA
Financial Crime Undercuts Africa’s Economic Growth Gains: allAfrica, 6 August 2018
Financial crime in developing countries, particularly Africa, is on the rise, undermining gains in economic growth and negatively affecting development. This is particularly worrying on a continent whose countries are among the most resource-rich worldwide, but whose people are among the poorest.
Quantifying the cost of financial crime in Africa is difficult, and there’s a lack of consensus on what should be included in the list of offences. For example, in the area of corruption alone, the African Union (AU) estimates that 25% of the gross domestic product (GDP) of African states – some US$148 billion – is lost to corruption every year. Click here to read...
https://allafrica.com/stories/201808080675.html
UAE plans Ethiopia-Eritrea oil pipeline: africanews, 11 August 2018
The United Arab Emirates plans to build an oil pipeline connecting Eritrea and Ethiopia, the latest sign of the Gulf state’s increasing involvement in the Horn of Africa. The pipeline will run from Eritrea’s port city of Assab to Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa, an Ethiopian official said. Landlocked Ethiopia began extracting crude oil on a test basis from reserves in the country’s southeast in June and will need access through Eritrea in order to export it. Click here to read...
Egyptian forces kill 12 suspected militants in Sinai: Reuters, 12 August 2018
Egyptian security forces have killed 12 suspected militants in raids on their hideouts in north Sinai, state news agency MENA reported on Sunday, the latest in a campaign to uproot armed Islamists behind a wave of violence in the area. The deaths raised to at least 325 the number of suspected militants killed in the Sinai campaign which began in February, according to a Reuters count based on military statements. At least 35 military personnel have also been killed.
The state news agency said security forces came under fire when they raided a walled compound in al-Arish, the capital of North Sinai province, without giving a time frame for the incident. It said the raiding forces responded in kind and 12 suspected militants were killed in the shootout. The authorities were trying to verify their identities. Click here to read...
Burkina Faso: Suspected Jihadist kill 6 in the East: africanews, 12 August 2018
Five gendarmes and one civilian were killed in a mine explosion between the communities of Boungou and Ougarou, in the east of the country, State television reported. The incident occurred in the evening, when the vehicle transporting the constables and mining workers they were escorting to an extraction site struck an explosive device.
The incident comes as Islamic extremists are moving to the region, where they can hide in the thick forested areas, and are launching more attacks on security forces. Ousmane Traoré, the governor of the region, said the culprits are to be found among the many jihadist groups that abound in the region. Click here to read...
New Agreement with China: Opportunity to save Mozambique’s forests: IPS News Agency, 13 August 2018
Mozambique’s forests are disappearing at an alarming rate, with most of the destruction caused by excessive logging, corruption and weak laws. Better enforcement and improving regulations, including in its trade with China, are key to reversing this trend as ‘China in Mozambique’s forests: a review of issues and progress for livelihoods and sustainability’, a new report from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) shows.
About 10,000 square metres of Mozambique’s forests are being cut down every minute. And almost all of the 93 % of its timber that it exports to China is from just five species. According to customs import and export data, the rate of harvesting these species exceeds even the highest limit permitted under Mozambique’s forest law. Some analysts are concerned that this could lead to the complete depletion of these commercial species over the next 15 years. Click here to read...
