US President Donald Trump’s son met with a Russian lawyer linked to the Kremlin in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, a report reveals. Donald Trump Jr., had been promised damaging information about his father’s opponent, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, ahead of meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, The New York Times reported on Sunday, citing US officials.

In a declassified report released in January, the intelligence community concluded that Russia helped with the New York billionaire’s campaign effort ahead of winning the White House, an allegation dismissed both by Moscow and Trump.

According to the Times, the meeting represents “the first public indication that at least some in the campaign were willing to accept Russian help.” Then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, also took part in a meeting with the Russian lawyer. In a statement sent to the newspaper, Trump Jr. denied that he had received any information about the former secretary of state, asserting that the meeting had been held at the request of an acquaintance.

“After pleasantries were exchanged, the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton,” Trump Jr. said in his statement. “Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.”

He added that claims of helpful information by the lawyer were just an excuse to get him to attend the meeting over American adoptions of Russian children. “It became clear to me that this was the true agenda all along and that the claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting,” he said.

Source: Presstv

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has stressed that his country will remain loyal to Qatar and that a list of demands by Saudi Arabia and its allies from the Persian Gulf country are under no circumstances acceptable. “When it comes to this list of 13 items… it’s not acceptable under any circumstances,” said Erdogan in an interview with France 24 television on Wednesday.

He added that such demands are the equivalent of “stripping” Qatar of its statehood. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain all cut off diplomatic ties with Qatar on June 5, after officially accusing it of “sponsoring terrorism.”

On June 23, Saudi Arabia and its allies released a 13-point list of demands, including the severance of all Qatar’s ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement. The closing down of a Turkish military base in Qatar is one of the demands on the list. Erdogan stated the he was willing to close the base if Doha requested to do so.

“The Americans are also there, with 9,000 soldiers, and so are the French… Why are the Saudis disturbed by us and not by that? This is unacceptable,” he added. Meanwhile, the four Arab countries seeking to isolate Qatar have said in a statement that Doha’s response to their demands to end the Persian Gulf diplomatic crisis was “not serious.”
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir talks to reporters during a joint press conference with his Emirati, Egyptian, and Bahraini counterparts after their meeting in the Egyptian capital Cairo on July 5, 2017. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir also stated that the boycott of Qatar will continue until the Persian Gulf kingdom changes its policies in line with those of the Riyadh regime.

Source: Presstv

President Paul Biya has met for the last time the outgoing Swiss Ambassador to Cameroon, Claude Altermatt. The Swiss diplomat is presently at the Unity Palace today Wednesday the 5th of July 2017 to thank the Cameroonian dictator for the hospitality received during his four-year stay in the country.

Both men have examined the bilateral ties between Cameroon and Switzerland including Cameroonian migrants residing in the small but beautiful European country.

Claude Altermatt has reportedly hailed the cordial relations existing between Cameroon and Switzerland and hoped that they will be further strengthened when the new ambassador takes office.

Source: CRTV

Russia has announced that it may deploy troops to de-escalation zones in Syria after agreement from Turkey and Iran. Russian negotiator Alexander Lavrentyev made the announcement during talks being held in the Kazakh capital Astana on Tuesday.

“Overall, (the agreement) provides for the presence of Russian military police in the buffer zones, but once again this matter has not been agreed yet…Depending on when the documents on safe zones are signed, I think one should expect concrete measures on the deployment of forces within 2-3 weeks,” he said.

“So far it is hard to talk about presence of the Russian observers and representatives of the Russian defense ministry. But nevertheless overall there are plans for the Russian military police presence in the buffer zones. But still this matter has not been fully agreed yet. It will be related to the question about the status of de-escalation monitoring forces,” he added.

The final document pertaining to the de-escalation zones are expected to be signed on Wednesday, he added, noting that the principles of the zones have already been agreed upon in the former rounds of the talks.

In May, Russia, Iran and Turkey agreed to establish four “de-escalation zones” in Syria. Lavrentyev added that Russia and its partners are still engaged in negotiations concerning detailed maps and other conditions related to the Idlib province and southern regions while the borders of two other zones, in Homs province and near Damascus, had been agreed upon.

“One thing is to work with maps and another one is to apply it to reality on the ground which is rather complicated. And this process of course takes a long time. But nevertheless I would like to say that we have practically determined the contact lines and borders of the second and third de-escalation zones. We still have questions on Idlib and the southern zone,” he added.

The fifth round of Astana talks kicked off earlier on Tuesday. More than 2.5 million people are believed to be living in the general area of the four zones. The Syrian army unilaterally announced a halt to fighting until midnight July 6 in one of the zones that spans the southern provinces of Dara’a, Quneitra, and Sweida.

Source: Presstv

British Prime Minister Theresa May is yet to decide whether to publish details of a report about foreign funding of extremism in the UK with a focus on Saudi Arabia. The outcome of the Home Office investigation is not yet released, which “leaves question marks over whether their decision is influenced by our diplomatic ties,” said the Green party co-leader, Caroline Lucas, as cited in a Guardian report, published Monday.

The probe was commissioned by former Prime Minister David Cameron and approved by May in December 2015, although she demonstrated a resolve to boost ties with Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf Arab states later. Lucas and the Home Office both said this week that the British premier was personally responsible about whether to make the findings public.

“The review into the funding of Islamist extremism in the UK was commissioned by the former prime minister and reported to the home secretary and the prime minister in 2016,” claimed Home Office minister Sarah Newton. “The review has improved the government’s understanding of the nature, scale and sources of funding for Islamist extremism in the UK. Publication of the review is a decision for the prime minister.”

In her parliamentary question on the review’s whereabouts, Lucas called the delay “astonishing,” asserting that “the government is sitting on this report but refusing to publish it or give any reason for their continued secrecy.” Since Saudi Arabia launched its brutal campaign against Yemen in March 2015, the UK government has approved arms export licenses to Saudi Arabia worth $4.1 billion, according to London-based Campaign Against the Arms Trade.

May’s nemeses, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, and Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, have both called for making the findings public. According to Lucas, after recent terrorist attacks in Manchester and London, the British public is “quite rightly asking questions about routes to radicalization, and the funding of terror is central to this. “I urge Theresa May to reveal immediately whose advice they are following as to whether or not to publish this report, and to do all they can to put the facts into the public domain if it is safe to do so.”

Cameron had committed to publishing the report by spring 2016, according to the Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, but the Home Office later called its contents “very sensitive,” indicating that it would never be published. Condemning London’s efforts to “kowtow” before the monarchy, he noted, “It is a scandal that the government are suppressing this report. The only conclusion you can draw is that they are worried about what it actually says.”

Source: Presstv

US President Donald Trump’s disapproval rating appears to be on the path to reach 60 percent, a Gallup’s daily tracking poll shows. The 57-percent disapproval rating the president currently enjoys is slightly lower that his 60 percent record in mid-June, showed results of the Gallup poll released Sunday.

The past two Democratic presidents, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, never reached a 60 percent disapproval in the Gallup survey but Republican President George W. Bush managed to reach the 60 percent disapproval mark after almost five years in the White House.

Thirty-seven percent of those surveyed in the latest poll, said they still approve of the job Trump is doing. Having a margin of error of 3 percentage points, the poll was conducted among approximately 1,500 American adults via telephone.

According to a RealClear Politics average of polls, 54.5 percent of the Americans disapprove of the president’s job performance while 40 percent approve of it. A Gallup poll in May suggested that Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, gets less negative ratings than her father.

“Virtually all Americans are familiar with Donald Trump, with only 1% having no opinion of the president. Ivanka Trump is less familiar, though still well-known to Americans, with 16% saying they have never heard of or have no opinion of her,” Gallup said.

Source: Presstv