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Trump orders Pentagon to remove thousands of troops from Germany: report BY J. EDWARD MORENO - 06/05/20 03:36 PM EDT 2 Trump orders Pentagon to remove thousands of troops from Germany: report © Getty Images President Trump has directed the Department of Defense to send 9,500 troops home from Germany, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, which would bring the total stationed there down to 25,000. A defense official told the Journal the plan, which was ordered by national security advisor Robert O'Brien, has been underway since September and is not related to rising tensions between Trump and German...

Scientists around the world have worked overtime to get a handle on Covid-19, yet one great unknown remains. We still don’t know for sure whether this is only a medical crisis, or also a medical system crisis. The distinction matters for the novel coronavirus for the same reason it matters for other “natural disasters” that aren’t entirely natural. It is now widely understood that famines arise from local political failures in the trade and distribution of abundant global food supplies, not from local crop failures. Floods devastate communities not because the local rivers are unusually watery but because poor zoning...

Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, will testify before the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, Nov. 20, as part of the impeachment probe into President Donald Trump.

If European Union leaders thought there would be any flagging or hesitation from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson when the Brexit deadline loomed, they were sadly mistaken.Johnson penned an op-ed in The Sun and The Daily Express that explicitly threatened a British exit from the EU with or without a formal agreement by October 31.Politico: “After decades of campaigning, three years of arguments and seemingly endless months of pointless delay, it is now just 25 days until the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union comes to an end. We will be packing our bags and walking out on October...

A key witness in the House impeachment inquiry was ordered not to appear at a scheduled deposition with House committees on Tuesday, ramping up tensions between House Democrats and the Trump administration. The State Department instructed Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland not to appear for the deposition, according to his counsel. Sondland, a wealthy hotelier who had donated $1 million to President Trump's inaugural committee before taking his government position, was a figure in the text messages released by Democrats last week that showed administration officials discussing Trump's communications with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. Those talks have become...

The Trump administration has ordered the U.S. ambassador to the European Union not to appear at a scheduled Tuesday deposition on the Ukraine controversy, according to his lawyer -- a move likely to significantly escalate tensions between House Democrats and the White House. The move to block Gordon Sondland, first reported by The New York Times, is likely to infuriate Democrats who have indicated they will see any such move as an obstruction of its investigation into the controversy surrounding Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. An attorney for Sondland said the order not to appear...

I just heard TRUMP blocked E. U. Ambassador from testifying today. Will not be answering questions.

The diplomatic row that has erupted between Washington and Copenhagen over Greenland is just one part of a broader strategic battle being waged over control of the Arctic, according to one expert. US President Donald Trump has cancelled a trip to Denmark and launched a war of words with his Danish counterpart, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, after she rejected his idea of the US buying Greenland as "absurd". Mikaa Mered, professor of polar geopolitics at Paris' ILERI institute of international relations said Trump's unsolicited advances on the autonomous territory were a way to indicate US interest in the resource-rich Arctic...

European Union: Toward a European Superstate "The EU is a Sham Democracy" by Soeren Kern July 8, 2019 at 5:00 am https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14503/european-union-towards-superstate German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, nominated to be the next President of the European Commission, has called for the creation of a European superstate. "My aim is the United States of Europe..." she said in an interview with Der Spiegel. She has also called for the creation of a European Army. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, nominated to be the next President of the European Council, has said that Eastern European countries opposed to burden-sharing on...

The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has abruptly cancelled a long-established plan to hold talks with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, in Berlin, citing unspecified “international security issues”.

Washington (CNN)Secretary of State Mike Pompeo abruptly canceled a scheduled trip to Germany, where he was planning to meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel "due to pressing issues," the State Department said early Tuesday. No specific reason was given for the cancellation. The press pool traveling with Pompeo has not been told where they are going next, and have been warned they may not be able to report from the country they are going to until after their departure.

US President Donald Trump will make a three-day state visit to the UK from 3 to 5 June, Buckingham Palace has announced. The president and First Lady Melania Trump will be guests of the Queen and attend a ceremony in Portsmouth to mark 75 years since the D-Day landings. He will also have official talks with the prime minister at Downing Street. Mr Trump previously met the Queen at Windsor Castle when he came to the UK in July 2018 on a working visit. The White House said the upcoming trip would reaffirm the "steadfast and special relationship between the...

President Trump in an early morning tweet on Tuesday touted his administration's tariffs on $11 billion of European Union (EU) products in the wake of a World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling. "The World Trade Organization finds that the European Union subsidies to Airbus has adversely impacted the United States, which will now put Tariffs on $11 Billion of EU products!" he said. ... The administration late Monday released a list of about $11 billion worth of EU imports that will be affected by the tariffs as retaliation for EU subsidies to aircraft manufacturer Airbus deemed unfair by the WTO. U.S....

Last year I had the privilege of working as a youth rowing coach in Germany, spending six months along the beautiful Rhine River. I built friendships, regained my German fluency, and even got a state-recognized coaching license — all things of which I am very proud. While these positive experiences helped make this sojourn one I’ll cherish for the rest of my life, there was one cross I had to bear: my conservatism. In a country where 90% of the populace sees Donald Trump as a threatening despot, U.S. visitors who enjoy making America great again endure mockery and...

The Euro could "collapse" within the next 18 months, the man tipped as the next US ambassador to Brussels has claimed, adding that he would "short" the EU single currency if he was an investor. Prof Ted Malloch, a former Oxford University professor now at University of Reading, added that the UK and US could cut a bilateral trade deal inside 90 days and that elections in Europe this year could sweep away the EU as we know it. "The one thing I would do in 2017 is short the euro," Mr Malloch told the BBC, "I think it is...

ARMOURED vehicles bearing the European Union flag have stormed into Paris as protesters bring the city to a standstill.

In May 1997, NATO and Russia signed the “Founding Act,” which stated, among other things, that “NATO and Russia do not consider each other as adversaries,” and that “in the current and foreseeable security environment,” NATO would not seek “additional permanent stationing of substantial ground combat forces” inside nations close to Russia. Nothing was discussed about the Founding Act at the U.S.-Poland summit, but permanently deploying U.S. troops — especially a division-sized element — on Polish soil would essentially make the agreement moot. Right now, U.S. and NATO troops are regularly deployed on Polish soil, but only on a rotational...

France is famously America’s oldest ally, but more than half of French people no longer consider the United States a reliable partner, according to a survey released Wednesday. Just 44 percent said the US was a “trusted ally” under President Donald Trump — a 33-point plunge since the same survey was done in May 2014, when Barack Obama was in the White House. Only 17 percent said they had a positive opinion of Trump in the IFOP poll, commissioned by the American Jewish Committee advocacy group, France’s Foundation for Political Innovation and the Sursaut think-tank collective. Some 54 percent said...

Currently, Argentina uses up more than half of the 45,000 metric tons of high-end beef the EU can import yearly at a zero tariff rate. The U.S. and Canada had exported a total of 2,351.37 tons to the European Union this year by the end of July, according to the commission, the EU’s executive arm. That marks a considerable increase compared with the previous two years, when the U.S. and Canada combined exported fewer than 500 tons a year. The negotiations would discuss earmarking as much as 35,000 tons of that quota for U.S. producers, according to an EU diplomat...

European firms that stop doing business with Iran because of reimposed U.S. sanctions could in turn be sanctioned by the E.U., a special adviser to the 28-country bloc's top diplomat has warned. “If E.U. companies abide by U.S. secondary sanctions they will, in turn, be sanctioned by the E.U.," Nathalie Tocci, an aide to E.U. foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, told Britain’s BBC Radio 4 on Monday night.