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Donald Trump has lashed out at the press after MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell was forced to apologise for claiming Deutsche Bank’s financial records on the Trump family included loan documents co-signed by Russian billionaires close to Vladimir Putin.The president has defended his China trade war and pledged to reduce troop numbers in Afghanistan in an interview with Fox News Radio and been busy on Twitter proclaiming “the Age of Trump”, deriding New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand after she dropped out of the 2020 race and touting construction progress on his US-Mexico border wall, only for his own officials to contradict him.
August 29, 2019Read More
Syrian government forces pressed ahead with their military offensive in Idlib, seizing a cluster of villages on the southeastern edges of the province on Thursday as the overall civilian death toll from the campaign rose further. The government-contro…
August 29, 2019Read More
(Bloomberg Opinion) — At the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency, there was a running debate among the few right-leaning pundits, scholars and politicians who still opposed him. Is it better, they asked, to mitigate Trump’s policies from the inside…
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Ruth Davidson quit as leader of the Conservative Party in Scotland on Thursday, saying she could no longer juggle the demands of being a politician with family life and after doing everything she could to mitigate the risks of Brexit. The 40-year-old …
August 29, 2019Read More
China sent fresh troops to Hong Kong Thursday as part of a “routine” garrison rotation, as the financial hub braced for a new round of violent protests after police refused permission for a mass rally at the weekend. Hong Kong has been mired in over three months of political crisis, with police and protesters engaging in increasingly violent clashes, prompting Beijing to ramp up its rhetoric and a public relations campaign against the anti-government movement. Chinese state media on Thursday broadcast a video of armoured personnel carriers and trucks driving across the Hong Kong border, describing it as a routine rotation of the garrison stationed in the semi-autonomous city. “The Hong Kong Garrison of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army on Thursday morning completed the 22nd rotation since it began garrisoning Hong Kong in 1997,” Xinhua news agency reported. “Before coming… we learned about the situation of Hong Kong,” PLA officer Lieutenant-Colonel Yang Zheng, said in a slick PR video. “We’ve strengthened our training… to make sure we can fulfill our defence duties.” Chinese state media on Thursday broadcast a video of armoured personnel carriers and trucks driving across the border The rotation came less than 24 hours after police denied permission for a new mass rally planned for Saturday that was expected to draw hundreds of thousands of people to the streets – the 13th consecutive week of protests. Police have previously denied permission for rallies to take place, but the orders have largely been ignored. In a letter to the rally organisers, the Civil Human Rights Front (CHRF), police said they feared some participants would commit “violent and destructive acts”. Protesters have so far carried out “arson and large scale road blockades” and “used petrol bombs, steel balls, bricks, long spears, metal poles, as well as various self-made weapons to destroy public property”, the letter said of previous rallies. Last Sunday police deployed water cannon for the first time and one officer fire a live-round warning shot from his sidearm to fend off radical protesters after a sanctioned rally erupted into some of the worst violence of the past three months. This Saturday’s rally was called to mark five years since Beijing rejected political reforms in Hong Kong, a decision which sparked 79 days of political protests that became known as the Umbrella Movement. CHRF leader Jimmy Sham – who said he escaped unhurt after being set upon by masked men with a baseball bat and knife earlier Thursday – said the group would appeal against the police decision. “You can see the police’s course of action is intensifying, and you can see (Hong Kong leader) Carrie Lam has in fact no intention to let Hong Kong return to peace,” he said. Anti-government demonstrators have been urged to gather in the city centre and march to the Liaison Office, the department that represents China’s central government in Hong Kong, but both aspects, which need permission from authorities, have been banned. The last rally organised by the CHRF on August 18 brought hundreds of thousands of people to the city’s main public space. Despite being banned by police from leaving the area, they later marched peacefully through the streets in one of the first recent protest gatherings to end without major incident. The protests were originally ignited by the city’s Beijing-backed government trying to pass a bill allowing extraditions to mainland China, but they have evolved into a wider call for greater democracy and an investigation into allegations of police brutality. The mainly young protesters say freedoms within the semi-autonomous city, unique within China, are being eroded by Beijing. The unrest has shown no sign of abating, with protesters locked in a stalemate with the Hong Kong government, which has refused to give in to their demands. More than 850 people have been arrested since June. China has been accused of using intimidation, economic muscle and propaganda – including against Hong Kong airline Cathay Pacific as well as the city’s metro operator – to constrict support for the protests. Observers estimate the Hong Kong garrison numbers between 8,000 and 10,000 troops split between bases in southern China and a network of former British army barracks in Hong Kong. Trucks full of white-gloved PLA soldiers rolled into Hong Kong within hours of the 1997 handover, raising questions about their role. They stage frequent drills but have seldom since been seen outside their bases. Reuters witnesses on Thursday saw significantly more activity in and around the PLA’s Shek Kong military base in the rural New Territories than has been apparent in recent months. China has denounced the protests and accused the United States and Britain of interfering in its affairs in Hong Kong. It has sent clear warnings that forceful intervention is possible. Hundreds of People’s Armed Police this month conducted exercises at a sports stadium in Shenzhen that borders Hong Kong a day after the U.S. State Department said it was “deeply concerned” about their movements. The Chinese statement about rotating troops last year said the number of soldiers in Hong Kong “was maintained with no change”. That was not in Thursday’s announcement. Chinese defence ministry spokesman Ren Guoqiang told a regular monthly news briefing that the timing of the troop rotation was similar to that of previous years to “meet the demands of defending Hong Kong”. The garrison troops would fulfil their obligation of defending Hong Kong according to the law and would follow the orders of the Communist Party, he added. They had the confidence, determination and capability to “protect and defend Hong Kong’s long-term prosperity and stability”. He did not answer a question on whether troop levels in Hong Kong had risen as a result of the new troops arriving. Ren said that the People’s Armed Police drills in Shenzhen were routine and that they conduct similar exercises every year. The Civil Human Rights Front, the organiser of previous mass protests in Hong Kong that they said attracted up to two million people, plans a rally from Hong Kong’s Central business district to Beijing’s main representative Liaison Office in the city on Saturday. The group’s leader, Jimmy Sham, was attacked by two men armed with a knife and a baseball bat on Thursday, it said on its Facebook page. He was not hurt but a friend who stepped in to protect him suffered injuries to his left arm and was taken to hospital. Protesters targeted the Liaison Office, a potent symbol of Beijing’s rule, in July, daubing anti-China slogans on its walls and signs. Police refused permission for the march on Thursday, but the group said it would appeal. The protest would mark five years since Beijing ruled out universal suffrage for Hong Kong and comes as Hong Kong faces its first recession in a decade, with all its pillars of growth under stress. Unrest escalated in mid-June over a now-suspended extradition bill that would have allowed people to be sent to mainland China for trial in Communist Party-controlled courts. It has since evolved into calls for greater democracy under the “one country, two systems” formula under which Hong Kong has been run since 1997, guaranteeing freedoms not enjoyed on the mainland that include an independent judiciary. The protests have posed the biggest challenge for Communist Party rulers in Beijing since President Xi Jinping took power in 2012. Beijing is eager to quell the unrest before the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China on Oct. 1, when Xi will oversee a large military parade in the Chinese capital. China also rotated troops in neighbouring Macau, a former Portuguese colony that returned to Chinese rule in 1999.
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Yemen’s president urged Saudi Arabia on Thursday to rein in the United Arab Emirates after warplanes from his former ally staged airstrikes on Yemeni government troops, killing and wounding dozens as they headed to retake the key southern port city of …
August 29, 2019Read More
(Bloomberg) — Want to receive this post in your inbox every day? Sign up for the Balance of Power newsletter, and follow Bloomberg Politics on Twitter and Facebook for more.A half-forgotten man in Italy’s fractious politics for more than a year, Giuseppe Conte has managed to outfox arguably the country’s biggest political player.As prime minister, Conte was overshadowed by his deputies in an unruly coalition – the populist Five Star and the anti-immigration League fought constantly – and was dubbed a puppet and Mr. Nobody. League leader Matteo Salvini, with a commanding margin in opinion polls, recently collapsed that government in the hopes he could force a quick election and rule on his own.And yet Conte, with no prior political experience and no discernible political base, used his background as a lawyer to help negotiate a mandate to form a new government and see off Salvini, at least for now.He’ll need all his backroom navigating skills in the coming months. The new coalition will probably be as fragile as the old one – Five Star and the Democratic Party are long-time rivals with little in common aside from the desire to avoid snap elections. Expect clashes over the 2020 budget.It’s a matter of when, not if, elections come. Salvini may have retreated to his corner but he’ll be doing his best to meddle. Bets are already on as to how long Conte’s new grouping lasts.Global HeadlinesMeeting murkiness | Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told Bloomberg News that U.S. trade officials expect Chinese negotiators to visit Washington, but wouldn’t say if a previously-planned September meeting would happen. It comes as concern about the prospects for a trade breakthrough continue to weigh on global markets.Record-low interest rates have the White House giving “very serious consideration” to selling ultra-long bonds with maturities of up to 100 years, Mnuchin said. But as Saleha Mohsin writes, Wall Street may not be ready to buy.Citizenship limits | Donald Trump’s administration said children adopted overseas by U.S. military personnel and government employees serving abroad will no longer be guaranteed citizenship. It’s part of a White-House-directed push to make legal immigration to the U.S. harder and follows an effort to shift funds to build 20 additional miles of barriers at the Mexico border.Key Tory departs | Scottish Conservative Party leader Ruth Davidson resigned, a blow to U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson amid talk an election is in the wings. Davidson was a key factor in delivering the Conservative seats needed for Johnson’s predecessor Theresa May to win the last vote in 2017. She mostly cited family reasons, but it comes after Johnson moved to suspend Parliament as he seeks to avoid further delays to Brexit.Click here to read how Johnson’s gambit could yet force a Brexit deal through.Seeking time| Grappling with an uphill re-election bid and a worsening debt and currency crisis, President Mauricio Macri is trying to cajole creditors into giving Argentina longer to repay them. The risk for Macri is yet another default by a country that has earned a reputation as a serial defaulter over the past century.Not the only one | Turns out Colombia, Peru and Bolivia are destroying their tropical forest at a faster rate than Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil. These countries aren’t necessarily encouraging deforestation but they do lack the ability to prevent ranchers, cocaine producers and illegal gold miners from ripping up and poisoning forests.What to WatchNew York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is the latest Democrat to drop out of the presidential race, after failing to qualify for the third debate. Trump — who has pledged to re-establish U.S. dominance in space — takes part in an event marking the creation of a new branch of the military called Space Command. A court ordered the retrial of Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Jay Y. Lee on bribery charges, reviving legal uncertainty around South Korea’s largest company at a time of global trade turmoil. It did the same for ex-President Park Geun-hye. China said a U.S. warship sailing near disputed islands in the South China Sea was violating its sovereignty after the Navy conducted its sixth so-called freedom of navigation operation in the area in the past 12 months.And finally… Trump and Democratic front-runner Joe Biden disagree on a lot. But they often sound alike. The 2020 rivals share more than a few verbal tics, including an outspoken appreciation of beautiful women, large crowds and their own IQs. Take our quiz to see if you can guess who said what. \–With assistance from Kathleen Hunter, Matthew Bristow and Robert Hutton.To contact the author of this story: Rosalind Mathieson in London at [email protected] contact the editor responsible for this story: Alan Crawford at [email protected] more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
August 29, 2019Read More
(Bloomberg) — Billionaire Tom Steyer wrote off the $181 million he paid in state and local taxes over nine years, according to tax returns released by his presidential campaign Thursday.His income totaled $1.2 billion from 2009 through 2017, and SALT …
August 29, 2019Read More
(Bloomberg Opinion) — Not long after Britain voted to leave the European Union, the City of London’s chiefs grudgingly began hammering out plans for the worst: that Britain might eventually abandon the EU’s single market. Now the future is suddenly lo…
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(Bloomberg) — Follow @Brexit, sign up to our Brexit Bulletin, and tell us your Brexit story. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was faced with multiple political storms after the Scottish leader credited with rescuing his Conservative Party at the last…
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(Washington, D.C.) Pentagon and industry developers are now testing a new series of hypersonic weapons prototypes as part of a large-scale effort to fast-track the weapons to service. The U.S. acceleration of the weapons, which includes air flights, ground-firing, wind-tunnels, simulation and various kinds of prototyping, is widely discussed as much needed response to Russian and Chinese progress in the area of hypersonics.Flight tests, demonstrations, ground testing and advanced air-vehicle configuration prototyping are all providing data for an Air Force, DARPA and Raytheon hypersonic weapons program called Hypersonic Air-Breathing Weapons Concept, or HAWC. DARPA statements on the program, citing program manager Andrew Knoedler, identify key areas of developmental emphasis to include “hydrocarbon scramjet-powered propulsion to enable sustained hypersonic cruise.” DARPA information, mirrored by Raytheon weapons developers, explains that “sustaining” speeds at 5-times the speed of sound is a technical characteristic to hypersonic weapons…and the HAWC in particular.“We are flying a HAWC system…ground tests have already happened. The whole point is to simulate what you would experience in flight, so you can create the correct thermal environment. You can model and measure the heat in the vehicle and you can measure the material properties,” Dr. Thomas Bussing, Vice President, Raytheon Missile Systems, told Warrior in an interview earlier this year. “You can’t test range (with a ground test), but you can measure performance, lift of the vehicle and thrust, attributes from which you can infer range.”Air-Breathing systems regularly use a scramjet engine to generate thrust — and propel the air vehicle across long distances to a target. While engineered to reach previously unattainable levels of propulsion, scramjet engine technology aligns with the technical configuration of existing high-power engine systems. This includes taking in a high-speed airflow, compressing the air and then igniting it with gas or some kind of propellant to generate thrust.“Air-breathing systems can be air or ground-launched and have a rocket motor to accelerate to a cruise speed,” Bussing said.Alongside air-breathing hypersonic weapons, the Pentagon is also developing “boost-glide” weapons which achieve speed and range by “skipping off the upper atmosphere,” Bussing said. They can be a winged glider or take on a canonical shape, making them maneuverable and high-speed with a high “lift over drag ratio.”Boost-glide hypersonic weapons, Bussing explained, “propel a glide vehicle to a point in space where it has a certain altitude and a certain forward speed.” The speed of descent then propels the weapon toward its target. Achieving hypersonic weapons effectiveness is not without substantial challenges, according to Raytheon developers.A Raytheon essay cites “thermodynamics” or “heat” management as essential to the effort. Objects, such as weapons, traveling at hypersonic speeds naturally generate a massive amount of heat which must be properly managed for the weapon to function. Also, specific materials designed to withstand high temperatures need to be used as well, Raytheon data states. One of the greatest challenges is what the Raytheon paper refers to as the “effects chain” — the command and control, networking and sensor technology sufficient to achieve the requisite guidance, targeting and precision flight.Air Force hypersonic weapons acceleration hinges upon a deliberate service acquisition strategy intended to prototype, “bend metal” and test weapons earlier in the developmental process; the concept, as articulated by Air Force Acquisition Executive Dr. William Roper, is to circumvent some of the longer time-frame and at times bureaucratic elements of the traditional acquisition process – and field reliable, tested weapons and technology much sooner than would otherwise be the case. While emphasizing this strategy, Roper seemed to anticipate or lay the foundation for what is now a very fast-moving US hypersonic weapons testing and development process.“I am working with the team on acceleration and I am very confident that a significant acceleration is possible,” Roper said last year.Yet another indication of Air Force and Pentagon hypersonic weapons “urgency” is visible through its established “Department of Defense High-Performance Computing Modernization Program’s Hypersonic Vehicle Simulation Institute.” The new entity is being led by Dr. Russ Cummings, an Air Force Academy professor of aeronautics.“Hypersonics create a high degree of asymmetry, which means it takes a tremendous amount of energy to counter them. They are highly maneuverable and highly survivable,” Bussing said.Many Hypersonic weapons are engineered as “kinetic energy” strike weapons, meaning they will not use explosives but rather rely upon sheer speed and the force of impact to destroy targets, developers explain. A super high-speed drone or ISR platform would better enable air vehicles to rapidly enter and exit enemy territory and send back relevant imagery without being detected by enemy radar or shot down.Although potential defensive uses for hypersonic weapons, interceptors or vehicles are by no means beyond the realm of consideration, the principle effort at the moment is to engineer offensive weapons able to quickly destroy enemy targets at great distances. Air Force Scientists explain that speed of sound can vary, depending upon the altitude; at the ground level it is roughly 1,100 feet per second. Accordingly, if a weapon is engineered with 2,000 seconds worth of fuel – it can travel up to 2,000 miles to a target, former Air Force Chief Scientist Gregory Zacharias told Warrior in a previous interview.This Hypersonic weapons acceleration is taking place within a high-threat global environment. Both Russia and China have been visibly conducting Hypersonic weapons tests, leading some to raise the question as to whether the US could be behind key rivals in this area.A Popular Mechanics report from earlier this year cites Chinese State Media as having announced a successful test of a new “wave-rider” Hypersonic vehicle. “The Hypersonic vehicle that detached from the booster rocket flew for 400 seconds, achieving a maximum speed of Mach 5.5 to 6 ( 4,200 to 4,600 miles an hour) and reaching an altitude of 100,000 feet,” the report says.Also, a report in The Diplomat earlier this year outlines Chinese DF-17 Hypersonic missile tests in November of last year.Regarding the Russians, Bussing referred to Putin’s claim that Russia has hypersonic weapons that are able to fly from a fighter jet. Some of Putin’s theatrics have included “live-action test footage with computer graphics in a series of videos,” as described in an essay in The National Interest by William Giannetti.“The first video featured the hefty MiG-31 Foxhound, lofting a four-ton hypersonic Kinzhal (Dagger) from its underside into a U.S. Ticonderoga-class warship. Then came the Avangard (Vanguard) hypersonic glide vehicle—a curious weapon with potentially dangerous implications. The Avangard will likely be helped into the atmosphere by a giant rocket like the RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM),” Giannetti writes.The Pentagon’s 2020 budget, released earlier this year, proposes a hypersonic weapons increase, citing the request this way – “Hypersonics weapons development to complicate adversaries’ detection and defense – $2.6 billion,” DoD budget documents say.Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army – Acquisition, Logistics& Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.Image: YouTube Screenshot.
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