NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney, who is also the deputy prime minister and trade minister, about the latest developments concerning Brexit.
August 29, 2019Read More
If it’s not FIFA, it’s the IOC. Just like Russia’s World Cup last year, it was a major sporting event that brought China in from the cold to present a human face to a suspicious world. Equally significantly, the 2008 Beijing Olympics allowed Games orga…
August 29, 2019Read More
North Korea accused the United Kingdom, France and Germany on Thursday of meddling in its “self-defensive measures for arms modernization,” saying the West will make “no greater mistake” than thinking Pyongyang will give up its right to have weapons th…
August 29, 2019Read More
The Treasury Department on Thursday targeted a Lebanese bank the Trump administration calls the “bank of choice” of Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, as part of a maximum pressure campaign against Tehran. The U.S., in partnership with Oman, also ann…
August 29, 2019Read More
(Bloomberg) — The largest U.S. business lobby urged President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping to withdraw new tariffs starting Sunday and return to talks in good faith to end an escalating trade war that is threatening the economy.“At th…
August 29, 2019Read More
Boston, England, is one of the heaviest Brexit voting towns. People there are still in favor of leaving the European Union and support Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s move to leave on October 31.
August 29, 2019Read More
Colombia’s President Iván Duque is accusing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of providing safe haven to a cadre of demobilized rebel leaders who have just announced they are rearming. Duque also says he’s offering a nearly $1 million reward for the…
August 29, 2019Read More
A Government scientific adviser has said that there are no health reasons to ban chlorinated chicken imported from the US after Brexit. Sir Ian Boyd, chief scientific adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), said there was no scientific evidence that the meat is harmful and it should be up to British consumers to decide if they want to eat it. It is common practice in the US to to sterilise chicken carcasses with chlorine as birds are often in such crowded conditions that infection rates with salmonella and listeria are high. Sir Ian Boyd said: “From a health perspective there really isn’t a problem with chlorinated chicken. “The issue is about production processes and animal welfare, and that is a values-based choice that people need to make. “My view is that we need to be allowed to make that choice. “But it is the job of people like me to make sure that we explain as clearly as possible what the consequences of different choices are for people,” he told Sky News. He added that there was no good reason to ban hormone-treated beef either as the amount of hormone is extraordinarily small. “The chances are that most of it will have been metabolised when it comes into the meat you would eat,” he said. “The chances of it having any biological effect on us is almost infinitesimally small.” The EU has banned the feeding of hormones to cattle over fears that it may cause cancer. Ahead of becoming the Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in March this year that chlorine-washed chicken was a “public safety no-brainer”, while US Ambassador Woody Johnson has insisted it should be included in a future trade deal. But the National Farmers’ Union has warned cheap production methods could put British poultry producers out of business. Sir Ian is to step down as Defra’s chief scientific adviser after seven years in the position. His successor is Professor Gideon Henderson, an expert in ocean sciences and climate change.
August 29, 2019Read More
Colombia was on edge on Thursday as the top peace negotiator for the country’s Marxist guerrillas announced that he was resuming armed conflict, promising to re-start the Western hemisphere’s longest-running civil war three years after a peace deal was signed. Luciano Marin, better known as Ivan Marquez, published a video on YouTube announcing that he and his Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) colleagues were once again taking up arms. Appearing alongside some 20 heavily-armed guerrillas dressed in camouflaged fatigues, he condemned Ivan Duque, the president, for standing by idly as hundreds of Leftist activists and 150 rebels were killed since demobilizing as part of the peace deal. “When we signed the accord in Havana we did so with the conviction that it was possible to change the life of the most humble and dispossessed,” he said. “But the state hasn’t fulfilled its most important obligation, which is to guarantee the life of its citizens and especially avoid assassinations for political reasons.” A still from Ivan Marquez’s video speech, posted online on August 29 In the video, Marquez, speaking from what he said were Colombia’s eastern jungles in the Amazon rainforest, stood alongside several former Farc leaders, including ideologue Seuxis Hernandez, alias Jesus Santrich, who abandoned the peace process after the US ordered his arrest on drug charges. The government said it was very concerned by the announcement. Bogota is struggling to cope with the aftermath of the 50-year war, the recent influx of over a million refugees from neighbouring Venezuela, and the continued guerrilla activity from the ELN (National Liberation Army). In January the ELN claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack on a police academy in Bogota which killed 21 people. The group is also known to operate across the border in lawless parts of Venezuela. Marquez’s announcement will spark concerns of further instability in the hard-hit country, and in the wider region. Farc was formed in 1964 as a Che Guevara-inspired Marxist group claiming peasant land rights. The guerrilla war they launched mutated into a conflict which threatened to turn Colombia into a failed state, spawning vicious bands of paramilitaries, sprung up to drive the Farc out but rapidly turning to narcotrafficking and massacres of their own. Members of Farc marching in a 2001 military parade Eight million people are considered victims of the violence – 30,000 kidnapped, 45,000 “disappeared,” and 6.9 million forced from their homes – giving Colombia the highest number of internal refugees in the world. Peace talks were began in secret in Cuba in 2012, and concluded in 2016 – a feat which won then-president Juan Manuel Santos the Nobel Peace Prize. Around 90 per cent of the 7,000 rebels who handed over their weapons to United Nations observers in 2016 continue to live up to their commitments under the peace deal. Implementation of the accord has not been easy, however, and Mr Santos’s political opponents have long considered the deal too soft on the former combatants. Farc members themselves have grown frustrated at the government, and an estimated 2,500 rebels still operate under dissident Farc commanders. Rodrigo Londono, the head of Farc’s political wing, who challenged Mr Duque for the presidency in 2018, apologised to his fellow Colombians for Marquez’s declaration. “I have mixed feelings,” said Mr Londono, who is better known by his alias Timochenko. “It’s an unfortunate development, but at the same time it leaves things clearer and ends the ambiguity because we had been facing a complex situation for some time.” Rodrigo Londono, known as Timochenko, campaigning in Bogora on January 7, 2018 Mr Santos urged Colombia to continue with the peace process. “90 per cent of the Farc remain in the peace process. We must continue to fulfill our obligations to them, and repress the deserters with complete force,” he said in a message on Twitter. “The battle for peace must not stop!” Miguel Ceballos, Colombia’s peace commissioner, called for swift action from the peace tribunal and insisted the government would seek the rebel leaders’ arrest. “It’s a very worrying announcement,” he said. “There is no surprise for the national government. Unfortunately, these people had already made clear, by their behaviour, that they turned their backs on the peace accord.” Mr Duque was elected on a platform promoted by Mr Santos’s predecessor and vehement critic Alvaro Uribe, opposing many aspects of the peace deal. Many feared he would rip the entire agreement up. In office, however, he has moderated his views, and started implementing ambitious aspects of the accord to build roads, schools and other infrastructure in traditionally neglected areas of the country. Critics have accused him of not doing enough to protect Leftist activists. He is also accused of aligning with the US to gut the special peace tribunals, whose goal is to foster reconciliation and truth-telling for victims, instead of seeking full punishment for war atrocities.
August 29, 2019Read More
When contacted by Reuters, a spokesman for prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York declined to comment. The inquiries suggest that the U.S. government is investigating aspects of Huawei’s business practices that weren’t covered in indictments …
August 29, 2019Read More
The situation in Hong Kong is disconcerting for China’s government: what started as a protest in opposition to a controversial extradition bill has morphed into nothing less than an outright revolt against the city’s indirect rule by mainland authoriti…
August 29, 2019Read More
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