British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had this week taken Britain one step closer to a no-deal Brexit, following Brexit negotiator David Frost’s meeting with EU officials and their reaction to the newly-appointed Brexit negotiator.

While the bloc is still hopeful of securing a deal, their reaction to Downing Street suggests that they now seriously acknowledge the very real possibility that Johnson will indeed dig his heels in and stick to his guns regarding a no-deal Brexit, whatever the economic cost.

If the UK does go through with a no-deal Brexit, it’s likely to impact the most vulnerable in society. Most of the political class, including Nicola Sturgeon leader of the Scottish National Party, have also warned against a no-deal Brexit.

While it’s impossible to know whether Johnson is bluffing or if the writing really is on the wall regarding a no-deal Brexit, the impact has already and will continue to be felt.

Johnson and his team remain ideologically committed to a no-deal Brexit whatever the cost, despite the evidence that doing so would severely damage the UK’s economy.

Source: Presstv

Veteran Indian politician Sushma Swaraj, who most recently served as minister of external affairs, passed away on Tuesday, following a cardiac arrest.

Swaraj, 67, a senior leader of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had opted out of contesting elections earlier this year citing health reasons.

“A glorious chapter in Indian politics comes to an end,” tweeted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “India grieves the demise of a remarkable leader who devoted her life to public service and bettering lives of the poor.”

A former Supreme Court lawyer, Swaraj was the senior most woman in Modi’s cabinet in his first term, which ended in May.

Swaraj was an active social media user, who often responded on Twitter and intervened to help people seeking assistance.

She was also known as a fiery politician and nationalist.

In 2017, she threatened to rescind the visas of all foreign executives of Amazon.com, if the e-commerce giant did not immediately take down doormats resembling the Indian flag from its Canadian portal.

President Ram Nath Kovind said India had “lost a much loved leader who epitomized dignity, courage & integrity in public life.” The opposition Congress party said it was “saddened.”

(Source: Reuters)

Barack Obama is calling on Americans to reject “any of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred” after more than 30 people are killed in mass shootings in the United States.

The former US president made the comment in a lengthy statement issued Monday, without referencing Donald Trump, currently at helm in the White House.

“We should soundly reject language coming out of the mouths of   any of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred and normalizes racist sentiments; leaders who demonize those who don’t look like us, or suggest that other people, including immigrants, threaten our way of life, or refer to other people as sub-human, or imply that America belongs to just one certain type of people,” Obama said in the statement.

Barack Obama✔@BarackObama

Mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, shocked the nation over the weekend, bringing gun control and white nationalism back to the country’s political discourse, particularly among Democrats running to beat Trump in 2020.

“It’s time for the overwhelming majority of Americans of goodwill, of every race and faith and political party, to say as much – clearly and unequivocally,” Obama said, adding that the rhetoric “has no place in our politics and our public life.”

Trump was, meanwhile, trying to distance himself from white supremacists, focusing on mental illness instead of stricter gun control.

“In one voice, our nation must condemn bigotry, hatred and white supremacy,” Trump said in a nationally televised address from the Diplomatic Room of the White House. “These sinister ideologies must be defeated.”

In his 10-minute address to the nation, Trump decried the “mentally ill monsters” behind mass shootings as well as violent video games.

“Mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger — not the gun,” the president said, without making any reference to his own call for bipartisan action on legislation providing “strong background checks,” just hours earlier.

It took two days for the president to address the suspected gunman’s alleged anti-immigrant bias in the El Paso shooting.

Source: Presstv

A gunman has shot and killed nine people and wounded 16 others at an arts and entertainment district in downtown Dayton, Ohio.

The shooting happened early Sunday morning, authorities said, noting the suspect was killed by police.

Just after 3 am, police asked residents to avoid the area known as the Oregon District, which is home to a number of nightclubs, art galleries and restaurants.

Later, it tweeted that “the shooter is deceased. There are 9 others also deceased.”

The shooting comes just 12 hours after another one in El Paso, Texas, where a gunman fatally shot 20 people and injured 26 others at a Walmart store.

The gunman armed with a powerful assault-style rifle opened fire at the Cielo Vista Walmart store in the majority-Hispanic border city.

The 21-year-old from Allen, a suburb of Dallas, then surrendered to police outside the store and was taken into custody, Texas authorities said.

He was identified as Patrick Crusius, who, according to US media, is white and linked to a “manifesto” posted online that described an attack in response to a “Hispanic invasion.”

Federal prosecutors raided the home of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein earlier this month, after charging him with sex trafficking. There, they say they discovered lewd photographs of girls as young as 14. Epstein is a convicted felon who was sentenced in 2008 for sex crimes involving a minor.

The spike in interest around Epstein’s allegations could create an opportunity for discussing just how prevalent child sexual abuse is. Estimates vary, but not widely – somewhere between 8% and 12% of children in the US have experienced sexual abuse.

Part of the difficulty of reaching a reliable estimate is that various surveys define child sexual abuse differently. In 2013, Catherine Townsend sifted through dozens of studies for Darkness to Light, a US not-for-profit that aims to prevent child sexual abuse. Townsend used several criteria for inclusion such as:

·         Child sexual abuse includes any sexual act between an adult and a young child, regardless of whether force or coercion is used.

·         Child sexual abuse includes both contact and non-contact sexual acts.

·         Child sexual abuse includes forced or coerced sexual acts between two children when there is an age or power differential. This can include unwanted or forcible peer abuse.

The overview of all the research looked at six different surveys published between 2000 and 2011 and found that the rate was significantly different between genders: about one in seven girls and one in 25 boys are sexually abused before they turn 18.

Overall, the research suggests that around one in 10 children are sexually abused.

Source: The Guardian

The United Nations has warned that a new wave of terror attacks may occur before the end of this year, as tens of thousands of foreigners, who had traveled abroad to join the Daesh or other terrorist groups, are said to be still alive.

Specialist monitors at the UN Security Council said in a report that despite recent decrease in attacks across the globe, terrorism continues to pose a significant threat to the world as up to 30,000 foreigners who traveled to the Iraq or Syria for joining the Daesh might still be alive.

Extremists from across Europe joined Daesh in droves in 2014, when the Takfiri terror group launched its campaign of death and destruction in Iraq and Syria.

European countries estimated that as many as 6,000 people traveled to the two Arab countries back then. About a third were killed, while another third remain detained in the region or have moved elsewhere.

“Their future prospects will be of international concern for the foreseeable future,” the report said. “Some may join al-Qaeda or other terrorist brands that may emerge.”

Europe has so far been unwilling to take back citizens who traveled to join Daesh, saying they pose a security threat to the European Union member states.

This has prompted US President Donald Trump to threaten the EU on Thursday that he may release over 10,000 European Daesh members, captured in Syria and Iraq, to return to the place where they came from.

Trump for several times asked European leaders to act more decisively and take back their nationals. Back in February, he posted a tweet calling on Europe to take them back or Washington would be “forced to release them.”

The US said it has arrested around 850 foreigners on terror charges in the last few years.

Back in January, France said it was considering the repatriation of 130 men and women to be tried, but a month later no progress appeared to have been made. French officials also said last year that they were working on plans to return children born to foreign fighters.

Earlier this year, Germany said that a third of its estimated 1,000 nationals who are believed to have joined Daesh in Iraq and Syria since 2013, have returned to their homeland. Many of those have since been prosecuted or placed into rehabilitation programs, Berlin said.

Source: Presstv

A fresh round of sanctions were imposed on Moscow Saturday by the United States over the 2018 poisoning of former double-agent Sergei Skripal in the United Kingdom.

Russian agents have been blamed for the poisoning of Skripal and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury in March last year using the Soviet-developed nerve agent Novichok.

Washington said Saturday it will oppose “the extension of any loan or financial or technical assistance to Russia” by international financial institutions and put limits on US banks from financing Russian sovereign debt, US State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement.

The US will also limit the export of goods and technology to Russia, Ortagus added.

Chemical weapons

The Salisbury attack, the first offensive use of chemical weapons in Europe since World War II, caused an international outcry and prompted a mass expulsion of Russian diplomats by Western nations.

Moscow denies involvement in the poisoning and has offered numerous and varied alternative explanations and counter-accusations.

Skripal, a former officer with Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency, was found guilty in 2006 of “high treason” before being traded in a spy exchange between Moscow, London and Washington.

In January the European Union imposed chemical weapons sanctions on nine Russian and Syrian officials, including the chief of the powerful GRU.

(AFP)

Libya’s Red Crescent said Friday its rescue workers had recovered the bodies of 62 migrants a day after one of the deadliest shipwrecks this year in the Mediterranean.

“Our Red Crescent teams have pulled 62 migrants” from the water since Thursday evening, the head of the unit Abdelmoneim Abu Sbeih said.

Aid agencies on Thursday said more than 100 migrants were missing after an overloaded boat sank off the Libyan coast east of the capital near the port city of Khoms.

About 145 migrants were rescued by the Libyan coastguard, and fishermen said the waters were full of floating bodies.

“The bodies are still floating onto the shore continuously, it’s not possible to give a total number,” Abu Sbeih added.

Local authorities were gathering and storing the bodies until burial places could be found, a municipal source in Khoms said.

The migrants had apparently been headed out to sea on three boats lashed together, according to the charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

Survivors had reported a total of almost 400 people on board, MSF mission chief Julien Raickman told AFP.

The head of the UN refugee agency Filippo Grandi called the wreck “the worst Mediterranean tragedy of this year”.

The capsize came only a few weeks after some 68 migrants died when an Italy-bound boat sank off Tunisia.

Libya, which has been wracked by chaos since the 2011 uprising that killed longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi, has long been a major transit route for migrants, especially from sub-Saharan Africa, desperate to reach Europe.

(Source: AFP)

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said Thursday he has decided to stop implementing all agreements with Israel. The declaration came a day after the US blocked a UN attempt to rebuke Israel over Palestinian home demolitions.

“We announce the leadership’s decision to stop implementing the agreements signed with the Israeli side,” Abbas said in a speech in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Abbas had previously not spoken so clearly and definitively of a break in cooperation, although Palestinian officials have in the past made threats to stop implementing all accords with Israel.

He said the Palestinians would immediately form a committee to study how to carry out the decision.

The two governments work together on matters ranging from water to security, and withdrawing from agreements could impact security in the occupied West Bank.

Abbas, 84, has made similar threats before and not implemented them.

US blocks UN attempt to rebuke Palestinian home demolitions

The Palestinian leader’s announcement came a day after the US blocked a move by Kuwait, Indonesia and South Africa to get the UN Security Council to condemn Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes on the outskirts of Jerusalem

Earlier this week, Israel began demolishing a number of Palestinian homes south of Jerusalem.

The residential structures were located close to Israel’s separation barrier which cuts off the occupied West Bank. Israel says they were built too close to the wall, which the Jewish state considers vital for its security.

The initial draft Security Council statement described the construction of the wall by Israel as contrary to international law

UN officials, who had called on Israel to halt the demolition plans, said 17 Palestinians faced displacement.

Kuwait, Indonesia and South Africa circulated a five-paragraph draft statement, according to diplomats, to the 15-member Security Council on Tuesday that expressed grave concern and warned that the demolition “undermines the viability of the two-state solution and the prospect for just and lasting peace”.

Such statements have to be agreed by consensus and on Wednesday the US told its council counterparts it could not support the text, diplomats said.

A revised three paragraph draft statement was then circulated, but the US again said it did not agree with the text, diplomats said.

Washington has long accused the UN of anti-Israel bias and shields its ally from council action.

US envoy says international law, UN resolutions ‘unclear’

US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt and Trump’s son-in-law-cum-adviser Jared Kushner have spent two years developing a peace plan they hope will provide a framework for renewed talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

Greenblatt told the Security Council on Tuesday a peace plan cannot rely on global consensus, inconclusive international law and “unclear” UN resolutions, sparking pushback from several countries. He said a decision on the release of the political component of the US plan would be made “soon”.

But relations between Abbas’s government, based in the West Bank, and its Israeli counterpart have worsened in recent months.

Israel cuts tax revenues to Palestinians

In February, the Jewish state decided to deduct around $10 million a month from tax revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinians, corresponding to the amount it said the Palestinian Authority pays to families of prisoners or directly to inmates in Israeli jails.

Israel sees such payments as encouraging attacks while Palestinians see them as support for families who have often lost their main breadwinner.

The Palestinians have in response refused to take any of the roughly $180 million in monthly tax revenues until the full amount is transferred, leaving Abbas’s PA in financial crisis.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and Reuters)

Sixteen US Marines were arrested on Thursday for their alleged involvement in illegal activities including human smuggling and drug-related offenses, the US military said.

In a press release, the Marine Corps said that the Marines were arrested at Camp Pendleton in California based on information gained from a previous human smuggling investigation.

The statement added that in addition to the Marines arrested, eight others were questioned for unrelated alleged drug offenses.

The Marine Corps said none of those arrested or detained were serving in support of the military’s mission along the border with Mexico.

The arrest comes a day after the military said a Navy SEAL team was sent back from Iraq because of discipline issues. An official said it was because, in part, they had been drinking alcohol, something that is prohibited.

(Source: Reuters)