Jun 29 2019

Six In The Morning Saturday 29 June 2019

 

G20 summit: Trump and Xi agree to restart US-China trade talks

The United States and China have agreed to resume trade negotiations, easing a protracted row that has fuelled a global economic slowdown.

US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping reached the agreement on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Japan.

Mr Trump said the talks had been “excellent”.

He had threatened to impose an additional $300bn (£236bn) in tariffs on Chinese imports.

However after the meeting in Osaka, he confirmed that Washington would not be adding the additional tariffs, and that he would continue to negotiate with Beijing “for the time being”.

When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez met Greta Thunberg: ‘Hope is contagious’

One is America’s youngest-ever congresswoman, the other a Swedish schoolgirl. Two of the most powerful voices on the climate speak for the first time
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez enters a boardroom at her constituency office in Queens, New York, after a short delay which, a political aide hopes, hasn’t been caused by a constituent waylaying her in the corridor. (“They can get really excited to meet her.”) Greta Thunberg is in her home in Sweden, her father testing the technology for the video link while the teenager waits in the background. The activists have never met nor spoken but, as two of the most visible climate campaigners in the world, they are keenly aware of each other.

Sea-Watch enters Lampedusa, captain Carola Rackete arrested

German charity rescue ship with 40 migrants on board docks after ‘tense’ days-long standoff with Italian authorities.

A German charity rescue ship with 40 migrants on board defied authorities and docked in the port of the Italian island of Lampedusa early Saturday, after it was at sea for more than two weeks.

Italian news agency ANSA reported that an Italian customs police boat attempted to prevent the Sea-Watch 3 charity ship from docking on multiple occasions, but had to get out of the way in order to not be trapped against a wharf.

Chinese infiltrators plotting Taiwan takeover

Hands of the United Front seen in false news reports and distortion of results of last municipal elections
ByJONATHAN MANTHORPE, TAIPEI

Beijing’s long-threatened invasion of Taiwan is well underway, but its shock troops are not the foot-soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army. They are the shadowy agents of the United Front Work Department (UFWD), Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “magic weapon,” who over the past decade have infiltrated Taiwanese society and institutions.

Since 2015 Xi has doubled the budget and responsibilities of the United Front, which aims to rally support for Chinese Communist Party objectives at home and abroad, often by creating groups and organizations that have no obvious affiliations with the party.

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IS PLANNING MASS VIDEO PROCEEDINGS FOR IMMIGRANTS IN TENTS ON THE BORDER


June 29 2019

A TRUMP ADMINISTRATION program that banishes asylum-seekers to perilous Mexican border cities could expand exponentially — and disastrously — with a new plan to hold mass video proceedings in tents along the border.

Officially known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, the Trump program has already pushed over 15,000 migrants seeking asylum out of the U.S. and into areas just across the international line, many of which the State Department advises Americans to limit travel to because they are so crime-ridden. Many immigrant rights advocates call the program the “Migrant Persecution Protocols.”

Ancient palace emerges from drought-hit Iraq reservoir

Jack Guy, CNN • Updated 29th June 2019
 A 3,400-year-old palace has emerged from a reservoir in the Kurdistan region of Iraq after water levels dropped because of drought.
The discovery of the ruins in the Mosul Dam reservoir on the banks of the Tigris River inspired a spontaneous archeological dig that will improve understanding of the Mittani Empire, one of the least-researched empires of the Ancient Near East, the Kurdish-German team of researchers said in a press release.
“The find is one of the most important archaeological discoveries in the region in recent decades,” Kurdish archeologist Hasan Ahmed Qasim said in a press release.