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President Trump struck a positive tone Friday tweeting about “productive talks” going on between the U.S. and North Korea on possibly resurrecting a summit next month, a day after he nixed the highly anticipated meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. And if the original June 12 date, which is fast approaching, doesn't work out, the president said there could be a plan for a later time. “We are having very productive talks with North Korea about reinstating the Summit, which, if it does happen, will likely remain in Singapore on the same date, June 12th., and if necessary,...

Russian President Vladimir Putin took US President Donald Trump to task over a recent increase in trade barriers and an abandonment of the international trade order, all without saying his counterpart's name. In a speech at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Putin disparaged recent trade protectionism from countries including the US and urged nations to recommit to free trade. "We do not need trade wars or even temporary trade truces," Putin told a crowd of world leaders. "We need full-time trade peace." In addition to the general comments about protectionism, Putin also specifically attacked Trump's recent tariffs. Without specifically...

The U.S. is affirming new findings from investigators linking the 2014 downing of a Malaysia Airlines passenger plane to the Russian military. The State Department said Thursday that it has "complete confidence" in the Dutch-led probe that determined Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 had been shot down using a missile launcher from a Russian anti-aircraft brigade. Investigators announced findings from the long-running probe on Thursday, nearly four years after the plane carrying 298 passengers from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, went down over Crimea, a Ukrainian territory annexed by Russia. "We recall the UN Security Council’s demand that 'those responsible …...

Photo: TAI Ankara and Islamabad have signed a deal for the sale of 30 Turkish attack helicopters, according to an election manifesto the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) announced Thursday. In a November 2017 interview with the Anadolu Agency, Pakistani Minister for Defense Production Rana Tanveer Hussain said his country planned to procure 30 attack helicopters and four naval ships from Turkey. Hussain revealed that Pakistan was interested in the T129 ATAK helicopter, developed by the Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) and the Italy-based AgustaWestland, rebranded as Leonardo Helicopters in 2016. The gunship helicopter was added to the inventory...

Russia's Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has presented video of the country's new Su-57 fighter—you can read our full analysis on this often misunderstood aircraft here—launching a new cruise missile from its internal weapons bay. This is the first video we know of not only of this missile being tested, but also of the Su-57s weapons bays in use. In his statement, Shoigu mentions the Russian Ministry of Defense's large effort to test and evaluate new weapons on the Syrian battlefield, but it's not clear if this launch took place over the war-torn country or not. He says the test occurred...

German churches stopped or delayed 498 deportations of asylum seekers in the first quarter of 2018, new government figures have shown. The new figures are no great increase on 2017, which saw 1,478 deportations prevented through church asylum throughout the year, but a significant increase on 2016, which saw only 527 cases in the whole year. The German interior ministry figures came from an official answer to a parliamentary question put by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has long been critical of the German churches, despite insisting that Christianity is part of Germany’s cultural identity. The church tradition...

President Trump told Fox News on Friday he has struck a deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping to ease U.S. sanctions imposed on Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE. The Commerce Department last month blocked China's ZTE from importing American components for seven years, accusing it of misleading U.S. regulators after it last year settled charges of violating sanctions against Iran and North Korea. The ban was a virtual death sentence for ZTE, which relies on U.S. parts. The Trump administration, though, caused controversy by putting ZTE in play amid trade negotiations. According to Trump, Xi recently called him to ask if...

Exit poll result suggests huge majority of younger people voted Yes Ireland has voted by a landslide margin to change the constitution so that abortion can be legalised, according to an exit poll conducted for The Irish Times by Ipsos/MRBI. The poll suggests that the margin of victory for the Yes side in the referendum will be 68 per cent to 32 per cent – a stunning victory for the Yes side after a long and often divisive campaign. See here for liveblog coverage of events across Friday in the referendum vote. More than 4,500 voters were interviewed by Ipsos/MRBI...

Two years ago I wrote what may have been the most prophetic headline of my journalistic career. ‘Better a Cocker Spaniel as Prime Minister than Theresa May’. I didn’t mean to insult all Cocker Spaniels. Of course, I recognise that with the right training their natural intelligence can be channelled and they can be made into the most excellent gun dogs. But as anyone has ever owned a spaniel can confirm, they are also prone to being quite exceptionally idiotic and useless. Nowhere near as idiotic and useless as Britain’s current prime minister, especially where Brexit is concerned. Every now...

Articles about the arrest and subsequent imprisonment of independent journalist and activist Tommy Robinson are being rapidly scrubbed from the internet after the British government put restrictions in place banning any reporting on the matter. Robinson, 35, was arrested on Friday for suspicion of ‘breaching the peace’ while livestreaming to report on the trial of a child grooming gang and will now have to serve a prior 13 month suspended sentence for a similar offense. Articles from the Daily Record, Birmingham Live, The Mirror, RT and even Breitbart News were all taken offline in the hours following his detention.

Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) said President Donald Trump was using MS-13 “to paint Latinos as dangerous in our country.” De Blasio said, “Let’s talk about the speech in Long Island. That was painful. I went over the transcript again because I couldn’t believe it. It’s not about MS-13. It’s about an attempt to paint Latinos as dangerous in our country. Our police department rejects that. We became the safest big city in America because we worked with immigrant communities, they helped police make the city the safest big city in America....

So THIS is the plan. Here's the North Korean statement: The North Koreans are saying, "The US and North Korea can't even talk, due to the mutual historical baggage. So the only solution is reunification with the South." OH MY GOD. Kim Jong-un is saying that in order to improve relations, he's willing to dissolve his country! And with that one statement, China loses control of North Korea. Incredible. Trump and Bolton and Kim and Moon pulled off the mother of all deceptions. Next,Trump will agree to meet Kim. See, the Chinese were thinking small: nukes. Trump and Kim were...

There has been a lot of misinformation about both getting out of the so-called Iran deal and getting into a new North Korean agreement. The two situations may be connected, but not in the way we are usually told. Getting out of the Iran deal did not destroy trust in the U.S. government. Our departure from the deal does not mean that North Korea cannot reliably negotiate with America. [snip] Obama got the deal approved by the Iranians in part by paying them ransom for hostages through huge nighttime cash transfers.

A day after abruptly canceling plans for a June 12 summit with Kim Jong Un in Singapore, the Trump administration renewed hopes on Friday that the meeting is not all but doomed and may still take place. Following a fiery letter to Kim Jong Un cancelling the meeting on Thursday, Donald Trump tweeted on Friday morning: “Very good news to receive the warm and productive statement from North Korea. We will soon see where it will lead, hopefully to long and enduring prosperity and peace. Only time (and talent) will tell!” ______________________________________________ Very good news to receive the warm and...

It’s not exactly Donald Trump’s Reykjavik, but he has done the right thing by calling off the misconceived summit with Kim Jong-un.The North Koreans have been yanking our chain over the last week or so, presumably trying to establish their leverage and begin a negotiation over the negotiation. They seemed to make some progress, with Trump saying the other day that maybe we could settle for something short of complete, verifiable denuclearization, which is supposed to be our core demand. The president may have tempted the North Koreans into the gamesmanship by occasionally seeming over-eager to take credit for a...

South Korea sought to reassure its northern neighbor Friday after President Donald Trump abruptly canceled his planned June 12 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. South Korea’s Unification Ministry said it would “do its part” in working toward improving relations with North Korea and formally ending the Korean War as agreed in a historic meeting between the two longtime foes on April 27. Officials in the South were left blindsided Thursday after Trump penned a letter telling Kim he was canceling the summit because of “tremendous anger and open hostility displayed” by the North. President Moon Jae-in called...

“I shall go to Korea.” That’s what President Donald Trump should have said. Instead he pulled out of the North Korean summit altogether. Too bad. Had he stayed in he would have sounded just like President Dwight Eisenhower all those years ago when Ike, as a presidential candidate, electrified the public when he promised to go to Korea and end the Korean Wa

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s statement on Monday put an end to bargains. Officially, Washington has begun its war on the Iranian regime. The weapons of economic sanctions threaten the entire regime and do not only restrain it. The French Total left the gas fields in the Gulf and moved on. Head of the Italian company ENI told the company’s board that they shut down their offices in Tehran and stopped searching for oil and gas. Airbus signed a contract to sell Iran 100 airplanes and only three jets arrived in Tehran’s airport as part of this historic deal...

President Donald J. Trump vowed not to sign a bill on illegal immigration unless it included funding for a wall and strong border security. “Unless it includes a wall, and I mean a wall, a real wall, and unless it includes very strong border security, there will be no approvals from me,” Trump said in an interview with Fox and Friends host Brian Kilmeade aired Thursday morning.

Don’t water the weeds. It’s a good axiom for dealing with stubborn children and Kim Jong Un. President Trump made the right move yesterday when he canceled next month’s summit with the North Korean dictator. In a letter to Kim, Trump wrote, “Based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting. Therefore, please let this letter serve to represent that the Singapore summit, for the good of both parties, but to the detriment of the world, will not take place.”