According to a White House statement, United States President Donald Trump spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday about Iran and various issues.

"The leaders discussed the threat from Iran, as well as other critical bilateral and regional issues," the White House said in an email statement.

Relations between Iran and the United States have worsened since last year when Trump pulled out of Tehran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and reimposed sanctions on the country.

(With inputs from agencies)

According to a White House statement, United States President Donald Trump spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday about Iran and various issues.

According to a White House statement, United States President Donald Trump spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday about Iran and various issues. "The leaders discussed the threat from Iran, as well as other critical bilateral and regional issues," the White House said in an email statement. Relations between Iran and the United States have worsened since last year when Trump pulled out of Tehran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and reimposed sanctions on the country. (With inputs from agencies)

US President Trump discusses Iran with Israeli PM Netanyahu

President <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/effective-immediately-us-to-restore-steel-aluminum-tariffs-on-brazil-argentina-trump-265754">Donald Trump </a>struck back Monday at what he called unfair policies by <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/brazils-president-blames-leonardo-dicaprio-for-financing-amazon-fires-offers-no-evidence-265337">Brazil </a>and Argentina, saying he is reinstating tariffs on steel and aluminium from those countries.

"Brazil and Argentina have been presiding over a massive devaluation of their currencies," which is hurting American farmers, he said on Twitter.

"Effective immediately, I will restore the Tariffs on all Steel &amp; Aluminum that is shipped into the US from those countries."

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Brazil and Argentina have been presiding over a massive devaluation of their currencies. which is not good for our farmers. Therefore, effective immediately, I will restore the Tariffs on all Steel &amp; Aluminum that is shipped into the U.S. from those countries. The Federal....
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Trump last year announced global tariffs of 25 per cent on steel and 10 per cent on aluminium but later approved exemptions for some countries, including Argentina and Brazil which agreed to quotas.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who considers himself an ideological ally of Trump, said he would not hesitate to open a direct line to the White House to resolve the issue.

"I am going to talk to (Economy Minister) Paulo Guedes," Bolsonaro told reporters in Brasilia, adding that if needed "I have an open channel with" Trump.

Brazil is the second-largest supplier of steel to US markets behind Mexico.

And Brazil and Argentina have benefitted from the US trade war with China since they have stepped in to replace American exports of soybeans and other agricultural goods.

Bolsonaro earlier this month met with China's President Xi Jinping in Brasilia and said the Asian economic power is "becoming more and more part of Brazil's future."

Economic impact&nbsp;

Jose Urtubey, spokesman for Argentina's powerful UIA industrial lobby, said producers in the country will be harmed immediately by the tariffs.

With Argentina's "lack of competitiveness" as a producer, the fact that the United States had the lowest steel and aluminium tariffs was "beneficial," Urtubey said.

Brazil has teetered on the brink of recession this year and Argentina is again enmeshed in an economic crisis, which has led to the currencies of both countries weakening against the US dollar.

Bolsonaro's ultra-right government has promised to revive the nation's flagging economy with a massive stimulus plan, as well as pension and tax reforms, and the central bank has cut the key interest rate more than a dozen times since late 2016.

Trump views those moves as an effort to gain at the expense of the United States.

In his tweets, Trump also called on the Federal Reserve to "likewise act" so other nations no longer "take advantage of our strong dollar by further devaluing their currencies."&nbsp;

Amid a slowing global economy and the impact of Trump's wide-ranging trade offensive, mostly directed against China, the Fed has cut the benchmark interest rates three times this year.&nbsp;

But it has signalled it will stand back before deciding on any further moves.

Despite widespread complaints about the impact of the &nbsp;tariffs on US businesses and consumers, as well as the hit to farmers who have been the target of retaliation from trading partners, Trump claimed in his tweet on Monday that Washington has taken in "massive amounts of money" from the tariffs.

He also claimed that since imposing tariffs at the start of March 2018, US markets were "up as much as 21%." In fact, the benchmark stock index is up 14 per cent.

American steel has continued to suffer with overall employment edging downward and production halted at blast furnaces last month.

President Donald Trump struck back Monday at what he called unfair policies by Brazil and Argentina, saying he is reinstating tariffs on steel and aluminium from those countries.

President Donald Trump struck back Monday at what he called unfair policies by Brazil and Argentina, saying he is reinstating tariffs on steel and aluminium from those countries. "Brazil and Argentina have been presiding over a massive devaluation of their currencies," which is hurting American farmers, he said on Twitter. "Effective immediately, I will restore the Tariffs on all Steel & Aluminum that is shipped into the US from those countries." Brazil and Argentina have been presiding over a massive devaluation of their currencies. which is not good for our farmers. Therefore, effective immediately, I will restore the Tariffs on all Steel & Aluminum that is shipped into the U.S. from those countries. The Federal.... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2019 × Trump last year announced global tariffs of 25 per cent on steel and 10 per cent on aluminium but later approved exemptions for some countries, including Argentina and Brazil which agreed to quotas. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who considers himself an ideological ally of Trump, said he would not hesitate to open a direct line to the White House to resolve the issue. "I am going to talk to (Economy Minister) Paulo Guedes," Bolsonaro told reporters in Brasilia, adding that if needed "I have an open channel with" Trump. Brazil is the second-largest supplier of steel to US markets behind Mexico. And Brazil and Argentina have benefitted from the US trade war with China since they have stepped in to replace American exports of soybeans and other agricultural goods. Bolsonaro earlier this month met with China's President Xi Jinping in Brasilia and said the Asian economic power is "becoming more and more part of Brazil's future." Economic impact Jose Urtubey, spokesman for Argentina's powerful UIA industrial lobby, said producers in the country will be harmed immediately by the tariffs. With Argentina's "lack of competitiveness" as a producer, the fact that the United States had the lowest steel and aluminium tariffs was "beneficial," Urtubey said. Brazil has teetered on the brink of recession this year and Argentina is again enmeshed in an economic crisis, which has led to the currencies of both countries weakening against the US dollar. Bolsonaro's ultra-right government has promised to revive the nation's flagging economy with a massive stimulus plan, as well as pension and tax reforms, and the central bank has cut the key interest rate more than a dozen times since late 2016. Trump views those moves as an effort to gain at the expense of the United States. In his tweets, Trump also called on the Federal Reserve to "likewise act" so other nations no longer "take advantage of our strong dollar by further devaluing their currencies." Amid a slowing global economy and the impact of Trump's wide-ranging trade offensive, mostly directed against China, the Fed has cut the benchmark interest rates three times this year. But it has signalled it will stand back before deciding on any further moves. Despite widespread complaints about the impact of the tariffs on US businesses and consumers, as well as the hit to farmers who have been the target of retaliation from trading partners, Trump claimed in his tweet on Monday that Washington has taken in "massive amounts of money" from the tariffs. He also claimed that since imposing tariffs at the start of March 2018, US markets were "up as much as 21%." In fact, the benchmark stock index is up 14 per cent. American steel has continued to suffer with overall employment edging downward and production halted at blast furnaces last month.

US re-imposes steel, aluminium tariffs on Brazil, Argentina

US President Donald Trump's attorney said on Sunday that the White House will not participate in congressional hearings set for Wednesday that will consider passing impeachment articles against the president.

US President Donald Trump's attorney said on Sunday that the White House will not participate in congressional hearings set for Wednesday that will consider passing impeachment articles against the president. "We cannot fairly be expected to participate in a hearing while the witnesses are yet to be named and while it remains unclear whether the Judiciary Committee will afford the President a fair process through additional hearings," White House counsel Pat Cipollone wrote in a letter to Jerry Nadler, the Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the House of Representatives. "Accordingly, under the current circumstances, we do not intend to participate in your Wednesday hearing," Cipollone wrote. Trump is facing allegations in the House of Representatives investigation that he illegally sought help from Ukraine to obtain dirt on his domestic political rivals, including possible 2020 challenger Joe Biden. The House Judiciary Committee will begin meeting on Wednesday to determine whether the evidence compiled in the investigative phase of the process meets the constitutional impeachment standard of "treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanours." The committee is expected to consider at least four counts, or articles of impeachment, including abuse of power, bribery, contempt of Congress and obstruction of justice. Cipollone, however, did not rule out White House participation in all of the hearings, instead requesting further details from Nadler on how the inquiry will be conducted and saying he will give him an answer by next Friday.

White House says it will refuse to take part in impeachment hearing

The US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold its first impeachment hearing on December 4, starting a new phase of the inquiry that could lead to formal charges against President Donald Trump within weeks.

The following explains the basics of impeachment, what happens next, and why Trump is unlikely to be removed from office. 
&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; 
Why Impeachment?

The founders of the United States feared presidents abusing their powers, so they included in the Constitution a process for removing one from office.

The president, under the Constitution, can be removed from office for "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." 
 
High crimes and misdemeanours has historically encompassed corruption and abuses of the public trust, as opposed to just indictable violations of criminal statutes.

Former President Gerald Ford, while in Congress, famously said: "An impeachable offence is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history."

No president has ever been removed as a direct result of impeachment. One, Richard Nixon, resigned before he could be removed. Two, Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, were impeached by the House but not convicted by the Senate. 
&nbsp; &nbsp; 
How does it work?

Impeachment begins in the House, the lower chamber, which debates and votes on whether to bring charges against the president via approval of an impeachment resolution, or "articles of impeachment," by a simple majority of the body`s members.

The Constitution gives House leaders wide latitude in deciding how to conduct impeachment proceedings, legal experts said.

The House Intelligence Committee has conducted an investigation into whether Trump abused his power to pressure Ukraine to launch investigations that would benefit him politically, holding weeks of closed-door testimony and televised hearings. The panel is expected to release a formal evidence report shortly after lawmakers return to Congress on Dec. 3 from their Thanksgiving recess.

The Judiciary panel will use the report to consider formal charges that could form the basis of a full House impeachment vote by the end of December.

If the House approves articles of impeachment, a trial is then held in the Senate. House members act as the prosecutors; the senators as jurors; the chief justice of the Supreme Court presides. Historically, the president has been allowed to have defence lawyers call witnesses and request documents.

Can the Senate refuse to hold a trial?

There is debate about whether the Constitution requires a Senate trial. But Senate rules currently in effect require a trial, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has publicly stated that he will allow one to proceed.

Republicans could seek to amend those rules, but such a move is politically risky and considered unlikely, legal experts said.

What about opening a trial and quickly ending it?

The Senate rules allow members to file, before the conclusion of the trial, motions to dismiss the charges against the president. If such a motion passes by a simple majority the impeachment proceedings effectively end.

Clinton`s Senate impeachment trial, which did not end in a conviction, lasted five weeks. Halfway through the proceedings, a Democratic senator introduced a motion to dismiss, which was voted down.

What's the party breakdown in Congress?

The House comprises 431 members, 233 of whom are Democrats. As a result, the Democrats could impeach Trump with no Republican support.

In 1998, when Republicans had a House majority, the chamber voted largely along party lines to impeach Clinton, a Democrat.

The Senate now has 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats and two independents who usually vote with the Democrats. Conviction and removal of a president would require a two-thirds majority. So, for Trump to be removed from office via impeachment, in the case of all 100 senators voting, at least 20 Republicans and all the Democrats and independents would have to vote against him. 
&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; 
Who becomes the President if Trump is removed?

In the unlikely event the Senate convicted Trump, Vice President Mike Pence would become president for the remainder of Trump's term, which ends on January 20, 2021. 
 
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL) &nbsp; 
&nbsp; 
&nbsp;

The US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold its first impeachment hearing on December 4, starting a new phase of the inquiry that could lead to formal charges against President Donald Trump within weeks.

The US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold its first impeachment hearing on December 4, starting a new phase of the inquiry that could lead to formal charges against President Donald Trump within weeks. The following explains the basics of impeachment, what happens next, and why Trump is unlikely to be removed from office. Why Impeachment? The founders of the United States feared presidents abusing their powers, so they included in the Constitution a process for removing one from office. The president, under the Constitution, can be removed from office for "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." High crimes and misdemeanours has historically encompassed corruption and abuses of the public trust, as opposed to just indictable violations of criminal statutes. Former President Gerald Ford, while in Congress, famously said: "An impeachable offence is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history." No president has ever been removed as a direct result of impeachment. One, Richard Nixon, resigned before he could be removed. Two, Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, were impeached by the House but not convicted by the Senate. How does it work? Impeachment begins in the House, the lower chamber, which debates and votes on whether to bring charges against the president via approval of an impeachment resolution, or "articles of impeachment," by a simple majority of the body`s members. The Constitution gives House leaders wide latitude in deciding how to conduct impeachment proceedings, legal experts said. The House Intelligence Committee has conducted an investigation into whether Trump abused his power to pressure Ukraine to launch investigations that would benefit him politically, holding weeks of closed-door testimony and televised hearings. The panel is expected to release a formal evidence report shortly after lawmakers return to Congress on Dec. 3 from their Thanksgiving recess. The Judiciary panel will use the report to consider formal charges that could form the basis of a full House impeachment vote by the end of December. If the House approves articles of impeachment, a trial is then held in the Senate. House members act as the prosecutors; the senators as jurors; the chief justice of the Supreme Court presides. Historically, the president has been allowed to have defence lawyers call witnesses and request documents. Can the Senate refuse to hold a trial? There is debate about whether the Constitution requires a Senate trial. But Senate rules currently in effect require a trial, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has publicly stated that he will allow one to proceed. Republicans could seek to amend those rules, but such a move is politically risky and considered unlikely, legal experts said. What about opening a trial and quickly ending it? The Senate rules allow members to file, before the conclusion of the trial, motions to dismiss the charges against the president. If such a motion passes by a simple majority the impeachment proceedings effectively end. Clinton`s Senate impeachment trial, which did not end in a conviction, lasted five weeks. Halfway through the proceedings, a Democratic senator introduced a motion to dismiss, which was voted down. What's the party breakdown in Congress? The House comprises 431 members, 233 of whom are Democrats. As a result, the Democrats could impeach Trump with no Republican support. In 1998, when Republicans had a House majority, the chamber voted largely along party lines to impeach Clinton, a Democrat. The Senate now has 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats and two independents who usually vote with the Democrats. Conviction and removal of a president would require a two-thirds majority. So, for Trump to be removed from office via impeachment, in the case of all 100 senators voting, at least 20 Republicans and all the Democrats and independents would have to vote against him. Who becomes the President if Trump is removed? In the unlikely event the Senate convicted Trump, Vice President Mike Pence would become president for the remainder of Trump's term, which ends on January 20, 2021. (Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL)

How does the impeachment of a US President work?

By Cian O'Driscoll

Kurdish forces seized control of the Syrian town of Kobani in January 2015 after a four-month battle with Islamic State fighters. Footage of their triumph was relayed around the world. A global audience witnessed Kurdish troops indulge in raucous celebrations as they raised their flag on the hill that once flew the IS black banner.

And so it came as something of a shock when, in October 2019, President Donald Trump granted Turkey carte blanche to seize territory held by the Kurds. Consequently, what once appeared an emphatic victory for the Kurds has since descended into yet another dismal defeat.

This is not an unusual tale. Victories have also been proclaimed in the recent wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, only for violence to continue unabated.

The spectre of these apparently endless wars gives us cause to consider whether the notion of “victory” has any purchase or meaning in respect of contemporary warfare. Having spent the best part of the last decade thinking about this very question, I have come to believe that the idea of victory in modern war is nothing more than a myth, albeit an enduringly dangerous one.

As I argue in my new book, it’s high time for us to think again, and more deeply than we have done before, about what victory in war means today.

The view from Washington

The three most recent occupants of the White House offer very different views on the issue of victory. President Trump has made it both the cornerstone of his rhetoric and the lodestar of US foreign and security policy. “You’re going to be so proud of your country,” he assured the audience at a campaign rally in 2016, "We’re going to start winning again: we’re going to win at every level, we’re going to win economically […] we’re going to win militarily […] we’re going to win with every single facet, we’re going to win so much, you may even get tired of winning, and you’ll say ‘please, please, it’s too much winning, we can’t take it anymore’. And I’ll say, ‘no, it isn’t’. We have to keep winning, we have to win more, we’re going to win more."

Victory also loomed large in President George W. Bush’s statements on world politics. Delivering a keynote speech on the Iraq War in 2005, for example, Bush used the word “victory” 15 times while standing in front of a sign that read “Plan for Victory” and pitching a document entitled “Our National Strategy for Victory in Iraq”.

Sandwiched between Presidents Bush and Trump, President Barack Obama took a very different view. Convinced that the idiom of victory was a retrograde way to talk about how modern wars end, he sought to excise it from US strategic discourse. The term “victory” is unhelpful, he explained, because it evokes crude associations with conquest and triumphalism.

The disagreement between Trump and Bush on the one hand, and Obama on the other, runs deeper than a mere difference in rhetorical style (or lack thereof). It reflects profound uncertainties about the appropriateness of the language of victory to modern war.

Since the early 20th century, the view has emerged that, when it comes to the mechanised mass slaughter of modern warfare, nobody wins. As Aristide Briand — prime minister of France for periods either side of the first world war — put it: “In modern war there is no victor. Defeat reaches out its heavy hand to the uttermost corners of the Earth and lays its burdens on victor and vanquished alike.”

Bao Ninh, a veteran of the North Vietnamese Army and the author of one of the most moving war novels of the 20th century, The Sorrow of War, made much the same argument, but in simpler terms: “In war, no one wins or loses. There is only destruction.”

Victory is dead

Irrespective of whatever Presidents Bush and Trump might believe, it is certainly tempting to say that there can be no such thing as victory in modern war. It is easy to believe that war is so ghastly and so destructive that it can never result in anything that could reasonably be called a victory. Any successes achieved on the battlefield, it might be argued are likely to be both so tenuous and bought at such a bloody cost that the mere idea of calling them “victories” appears ironic.

But this can only be part of the story. It is too glib to declare victory in modern war an untenable proposition on the grounds that it can only be purchased at a terrible cost in human lives and suffering. The value of a victory may be diminished by a steep price tag, but not entirely negated by it.

For instance, while the second world war produced a truly barbaric body count, and boasts the cold war among its legacies, it also halted Nazism in its tracks. This, it goes without saying, must count for something. More recently, while the 1991 Gulf war arguably created more problems than it solved, it also successfully reversed Iraqi aggression in Kuwait.

My point here is a simple one: although victory can be hideously costly in modern war, and it invariably accomplishes far less than it is intended to achieve, it is not an entirely vacuous concept.

This brings us to the first of three twists in our tale. What is out of date here is not actually the general concept of victory itself, but the notion that victory is the product of decisive battles. The nature of modern warfare is not conducive to clear cut endings. Instead of yielding an emphatic victory for one side and, conversely, an incontrovertible defeat for the other, modern armed conflicts are prone to descend into protracted, drawn out endgames.

So it can sometimes be difficult to discern not only which side has won a given war but whether that war can even be deemed over in the first place. The words of Phil Klay, a writer who served in Iraq several years after President Bush had already declared “mission accomplished”, captured something of this confusion, "Success was a matter of perspective. In Iraq it had to be. There was no Omaha Beach, no Vicksburg Campaign, not even an Alamo to signal a clear defeat. The closest we’d come were those toppled Saddam statues, but that was years ago."

What this suggests is that victories no longer assume the form that they are expected to assume or that they had assumed in the past. If victory has historically been associated with the defeat of the adversary in a climactic pitched battle, this vision is now a relic from a bygone era. This is not how wars end in the 21st century.

Was victory ever really alive?

There is, then, plenty of evidence to support the view that, when it is spoken about in terms of decisiveness achieved through success in pitched battle, victory has little relevance to contemporary armed conflict.

But this is where we encounter the second twist in our tale. Some scholars claim that the vision of victory associated with decisive battle did not suddenly become problematic with the advent of the “war on terror”, nor even with the birth of modern warfare. Rather, they argue, it has always been problematic.

The historian Russell F. Weigley is the leading proponent of this view. He contends that the idea of decisive victory through battle is a romantic trope left over from the only time in history when wars were routinely decided by a single clash of arms: the long century bookended by the battles of Breitenfeld (1631) and Waterloo (1815).

Spectacular but also unique to this period of history, the set-piece battles of this era, Weigley argues, have had a distorting effect upon how war has been understood ever since. The pomp and drama of these clashes was such that they captured the imagination of military historians and the general public alike. Ignoring the fact that that attrition, raiding, and siege craft, rather than grand battles, have historically been the principal means by which wars have been waged, historians (and their readers) have been culpable of buying into (and perpetuating) a kind of Hollywood vision of war that mistakes an exception to the norm.

This excessively battle-centric understanding of warfare has taken root in the popular imagination. Most contemporary representations of war – in literature, media, art and film – envision it as a sequence of battles leading up to and culminating in a decisive set-piece clash of the kind that the 2015 footage from Kobani ostensibly captured. This reflects a distortion of the historical record. In actual fact, very few wars down the centuries have pivoted on battles. Most have hinged on harrying, manoeuvring and the denial of access to vital resources. So far as we fail to see this, a proclivity to “boy’s own history” is to blame.

The idea of decisive victory predicated on success in battle is simply a historical curio that, one interlude aside, has seldom had much relevance to the material realities of war.

Long live victory! 
 
So should this be the end of the matter? Obama and all the other critics of victory have, it seems, been vindicated. It is not merely that victory, couched in terms of decisiveness and indexed to success in pitched battle, has little relevance to the vagaries of contemporary warfare, it is that (one period around the 17th century aside) it has never had any salience.

This brings us to the third and final twist in our tale. While it is true that the idea of decisive victories achieved through pitched battle may be regarded as a product of lazy history writing, this should not be taken to mean that it is of no importance to how warfare is understood and practised. Even if it is just a myth, the idea of victory through decisive battle still bears significant clout. Chimerical though it may be, it still functions as a kind of regulative ideal, guiding people’s understanding, not so much of how wars actually end, but of how they ought to end.

Decisive victories may well be a rare beast, historically speaking, but they are also widely posited as the goal toward which all militaries should strive. This argument can be derived from the writings of, among others, the controversial historian Victor Davis Hanson.

Hanson, whose most recent book is a letter of support for the Trump presidency, is better known for writing several works dedicated to making the case that the idea of decisive victory through battle continues to carry moral weight in Western political culture, even though a long time has passed since it was germane in a military sense.

Hanson traces the idea of decisive victory through battle to classical Greek civilisation and argues that it reflects the longstanding belief that the best way for communities to settle intractable disputes is to send citizen armies to face one another across an open battlefield and there fight it out. By confronting one another in a kill-or-be-killed scenario, societies commit to testing, not only their valour and military prowess, but also the values they fight for in the crucible of combat. Any outcomes that arise from such contests, must, it follows, be respected as the verdict of battle.

There is plenty of evidence to support this view. The history of Western thinking about war from the classical world to the present day is marked by both a repugnance for the adoption of tactics that circumvent the opportunity for pitched battle, and a readiness to sneer at any victories won by those means as somehow less worthy.

In ancient Greece, Odysseus was scorned for his predilection for overcoming his enemies by guile rather than by hand-to-hand combat. In Persia, King Cyrus was similarly lambasted for relying on trickery to overcome his foes “rather than conquering [them] by force in battle”. In the fourth century BC, Alexander the Great valorised victories won by direct confrontation in pitched battles. He responded with contempt when his adviser, Parmenio, proposed launching a night-time ambush on their foes: “The policy you are suggesting is one of bandits and thieves … I am resolved to attack openly and by daylight. I choose to regret my good fortune rather than be ashamed of my victory.”

Beyond the classical world, knights in the middle ages were wont to burnish their victories by exaggerating the importance of battles and downplaying the part played by more humdrum modes of warring (such as raiding) in delivering them. These views also carried over into the canon of modern strategic thought.

The survival of this way of thinking into the present era is evident in the approbation that greets the use of those modes of fighting (such as the use of guerrilla tactics, terrorism, and drones) that preclude the finality of a decisive victory on the battlefield being achieved by either side. This reflects, I think, a lingering sense that any mode of belligerency that is not geared toward producing victory through the kind of fair fight that a battlefield contest is believed to represent must, in some sense, be morally problematic.

And so even though the ideal of decisive victory is best understood as nothing more than a myth, it still matters. It still shapes how we understand, think about and indeed approach war. As such, it continues to guide our thinking about what war can achieve, when it should be employed, by what means it should be conducted and how and when it should be concluded. To imagine that it can simply be struck from our vocabulary, as Obama apparently assumed, is as naive as it is foolish. But recognising this also reveals some unsettling realities.

‘Mowing the lawn’ 
The ideal of decisive victory, then, is a myth, albeit an enduringly powerful one that continues to shape how we think about war. And this myth poses some dangers.

It’s a myth that tempts us to think that war can still be a conclusive way of settling disputes between societies. It invites us to believe that societies can resolve their conflicts by simply fighting them out, with the winner taking all and loser honourably accepting its defeat as the verdict of battle. The problem with this vision is, of course, that it promises too much. War is too blunt an instrument to deliver such a clean ending. In a way, then, this belief sells us a false bill of goods – one that comes at a terrible cost in blood and treasure. One need only look to the plight of the Kurds in Kobani for proof of this.

To our detriment, we appear to be both stuck with and trapped by the language of victory.

The Israeli strategic doctrine known as “mowing the lawn” provides an intriguing counterpoint to this. Whereas Israeli strategists traditionally focused on procuring decisive battlefield victories against rival state armies, recent experiences in Gaza have led them to adopt a different approach.

Instead of supposing that the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) should aim to vanquish its enemies once and for all in direct combat, it is directed toward the pursuit of more modest, contingent objectives. The doctrine counsels that the IDF must treat the threat from Israel’s enemies in the same way that a gardener approaches the mowing of their lawn: that is, as a recurrent task that can never be fully completed but must instead be returned to at regular intervals.

As such, it reflects a hard-won acceptance of the fact that Israel will not achieve a final victory over its foes any time soon. In its place, it proposes that the best Israel can hope for is provisional gains – namely, the degradation and short-term containment of its enemies – that require constant and recurrent consolidation.

There are clearly very serious problems with this position — problems that I do not wish to deflect from or in any way minimise — but it does raise some interesting possibilities for how we think about victory. Specifically, it provokes us to reflect on what victory might look like if we ceased indexing it to notions of decisiveness and conclusiveness.

How might we reconfigure our understanding of victory so that it is coupled to provisional rather than final outcomes? This would presumably involve reframing it in partial and contingent rather than comprehensive terms. There is much to be said for this. But above all else, it would reconnect how we think about victory with the realities of modern warfare and a more sober assessment of the kind of goods it can deliver.

My point is not to persuade states to ape Israel’s strategic posture. It is, rather, to encourage reflection on the conundrum that victory in modern war poses.

What does winning mean today? 
 
Thinking about contemporary armed conflict in terms of victory is problematic because modern warfare is not configured in such a way as to produce what we might regard as a clear-cut victory for one side and an emphatic defeat for the other. Construed this way, victory appears more mythical than real.

But even if it is a myth, it colours how we approach contemporary armed conflict today, tempting us to believe that clean endings are still a possibility – when they are evidently not. Victory is, in this sense, a red herring.

One solution to this conundrum would be to strike victory from our vocabularies. That is, to simply cease talking about it or in its terms. Yet this is easier said than done. As President Obama discovered, the language of victory is very difficult to circumvent or evade. Just when you think it’s dead, it comes back with even greater force behind it.

The dilemma, then, is clear. Victory: can’t live with it, can’t live without it. The challenge arising from this is to rethink what we mean by victory. If, as the historian Christopher Hill once wrote, every generation must rewrite its history anew, the ever-changing nature of war demands that every generation must also rethink its understanding of military victory. 
 
(Cian O'Driscoll is Professor of Politics, University of Glasgow)

(This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-wars-no-longer-be-won-126068">original article</a>)

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL) &nbsp; 
&nbsp;

By Cian O'Driscoll Kurdish forces seized control of the Syrian town of Kobani in January 2015 after a four-month battle with Islamic State fighters. Footage of their triumph was relayed around the world.

By Cian O'Driscoll Kurdish forces seized control of the Syrian town of Kobani in January 2015 after a four-month battle with Islamic State fighters. Footage of their triumph was relayed around the world. A global audience witnessed Kurdish troops indulge in raucous celebrations as they raised their flag on the hill that once flew the IS black banner. And so it came as something of a shock when, in October 2019, President Donald Trump granted Turkey carte blanche to seize territory held by the Kurds. Consequently, what once appeared an emphatic victory for the Kurds has since descended into yet another dismal defeat. This is not an unusual tale. Victories have also been proclaimed in the recent wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, only for violence to continue unabated. The spectre of these apparently endless wars gives us cause to consider whether the notion of “victory” has any purchase or meaning in respect of contemporary warfare. Having spent the best part of the last decade thinking about this very question, I have come to believe that the idea of victory in modern war is nothing more than a myth, albeit an enduringly dangerous one. As I argue in my new book, it’s high time for us to think again, and more deeply than we have done before, about what victory in war means today. The view from Washington The three most recent occupants of the White House offer very different views on the issue of victory. President Trump has made it both the cornerstone of his rhetoric and the lodestar of US foreign and security policy. “You’re going to be so proud of your country,” he assured the audience at a campaign rally in 2016, "We’re going to start winning again: we’re going to win at every level, we’re going to win economically […] we’re going to win militarily […] we’re going to win with every single facet, we’re going to win so much, you may even get tired of winning, and you’ll say ‘please, please, it’s too much winning, we can’t take it anymore’. And I’ll say, ‘no, it isn’t’. We have to keep winning, we have to win more, we’re going to win more." Victory also loomed large in President George W. Bush’s statements on world politics. Delivering a keynote speech on the Iraq War in 2005, for example, Bush used the word “victory” 15 times while standing in front of a sign that read “Plan for Victory” and pitching a document entitled “Our National Strategy for Victory in Iraq”. Sandwiched between Presidents Bush and Trump, President Barack Obama took a very different view. Convinced that the idiom of victory was a retrograde way to talk about how modern wars end, he sought to excise it from US strategic discourse. The term “victory” is unhelpful, he explained, because it evokes crude associations with conquest and triumphalism. The disagreement between Trump and Bush on the one hand, and Obama on the other, runs deeper than a mere difference in rhetorical style (or lack thereof). It reflects profound uncertainties about the appropriateness of the language of victory to modern war. Since the early 20th century, the view has emerged that, when it comes to the mechanised mass slaughter of modern warfare, nobody wins. As Aristide Briand — prime minister of France for periods either side of the first world war — put it: “In modern war there is no victor. Defeat reaches out its heavy hand to the uttermost corners of the Earth and lays its burdens on victor and vanquished alike.” Bao Ninh, a veteran of the North Vietnamese Army and the author of one of the most moving war novels of the 20th century, The Sorrow of War, made much the same argument, but in simpler terms: “In war, no one wins or loses. There is only destruction.” Victory is dead Irrespective of whatever Presidents Bush and Trump might believe, it is certainly tempting to say that there can be no such thing as victory in modern war. It is easy to believe that war is so ghastly and so destructive that it can never result in anything that could reasonably be called a victory. Any successes achieved on the battlefield, it might be argued are likely to be both so tenuous and bought at such a bloody cost that the mere idea of calling them “victories” appears ironic. But this can only be part of the story. It is too glib to declare victory in modern war an untenable proposition on the grounds that it can only be purchased at a terrible cost in human lives and suffering. The value of a victory may be diminished by a steep price tag, but not entirely negated by it. For instance, while the second world war produced a truly barbaric body count, and boasts the cold war among its legacies, it also halted Nazism in its tracks. This, it goes without saying, must count for something. More recently, while the 1991 Gulf war arguably created more problems than it solved, it also successfully reversed Iraqi aggression in Kuwait. My point here is a simple one: although victory can be hideously costly in modern war, and it invariably accomplishes far less than it is intended to achieve, it is not an entirely vacuous concept. This brings us to the first of three twists in our tale. What is out of date here is not actually the general concept of victory itself, but the notion that victory is the product of decisive battles. The nature of modern warfare is not conducive to clear cut endings. Instead of yielding an emphatic victory for one side and, conversely, an incontrovertible defeat for the other, modern armed conflicts are prone to descend into protracted, drawn out endgames. So it can sometimes be difficult to discern not only which side has won a given war but whether that war can even be deemed over in the first place. The words of Phil Klay, a writer who served in Iraq several years after President Bush had already declared “mission accomplished”, captured something of this confusion, "Success was a matter of perspective. In Iraq it had to be. There was no Omaha Beach, no Vicksburg Campaign, not even an Alamo to signal a clear defeat. The closest we’d come were those toppled Saddam statues, but that was years ago." What this suggests is that victories no longer assume the form that they are expected to assume or that they had assumed in the past. If victory has historically been associated with the defeat of the adversary in a climactic pitched battle, this vision is now a relic from a bygone era. This is not how wars end in the 21st century. Was victory ever really alive? There is, then, plenty of evidence to support the view that, when it is spoken about in terms of decisiveness achieved through success in pitched battle, victory has little relevance to contemporary armed conflict. But this is where we encounter the second twist in our tale. Some scholars claim that the vision of victory associated with decisive battle did not suddenly become problematic with the advent of the “war on terror”, nor even with the birth of modern warfare. Rather, they argue, it has always been problematic. The historian Russell F. Weigley is the leading proponent of this view. He contends that the idea of decisive victory through battle is a romantic trope left over from the only time in history when wars were routinely decided by a single clash of arms: the long century bookended by the battles of Breitenfeld (1631) and Waterloo (1815). Spectacular but also unique to this period of history, the set-piece battles of this era, Weigley argues, have had a distorting effect upon how war has been understood ever since. The pomp and drama of these clashes was such that they captured the imagination of military historians and the general public alike. Ignoring the fact that that attrition, raiding, and siege craft, rather than grand battles, have historically been the principal means by which wars have been waged, historians (and their readers) have been culpable of buying into (and perpetuating) a kind of Hollywood vision of war that mistakes an exception to the norm. This excessively battle-centric understanding of warfare has taken root in the popular imagination. Most contemporary representations of war – in literature, media, art and film – envision it as a sequence of battles leading up to and culminating in a decisive set-piece clash of the kind that the 2015 footage from Kobani ostensibly captured. This reflects a distortion of the historical record. In actual fact, very few wars down the centuries have pivoted on battles. Most have hinged on harrying, manoeuvring and the denial of access to vital resources. So far as we fail to see this, a proclivity to “boy’s own history” is to blame. The idea of decisive victory predicated on success in battle is simply a historical curio that, one interlude aside, has seldom had much relevance to the material realities of war. Long live victory! So should this be the end of the matter? Obama and all the other critics of victory have, it seems, been vindicated. It is not merely that victory, couched in terms of decisiveness and indexed to success in pitched battle, has little relevance to the vagaries of contemporary warfare, it is that (one period around the 17th century aside) it has never had any salience. This brings us to the third and final twist in our tale. While it is true that the idea of decisive victories achieved through pitched battle may be regarded as a product of lazy history writing, this should not be taken to mean that it is of no importance to how warfare is understood and practised. Even if it is just a myth, the idea of victory through decisive battle still bears significant clout. Chimerical though it may be, it still functions as a kind of regulative ideal, guiding people’s understanding, not so much of how wars actually end, but of how they ought to end. Decisive victories may well be a rare beast, historically speaking, but they are also widely posited as the goal toward which all militaries should strive. This argument can be derived from the writings of, among others, the controversial historian Victor Davis Hanson. Hanson, whose most recent book is a letter of support for the Trump presidency, is better known for writing several works dedicated to making the case that the idea of decisive victory through battle continues to carry moral weight in Western political culture, even though a long time has passed since it was germane in a military sense. Hanson traces the idea of decisive victory through battle to classical Greek civilisation and argues that it reflects the longstanding belief that the best way for communities to settle intractable disputes is to send citizen armies to face one another across an open battlefield and there fight it out. By confronting one another in a kill-or-be-killed scenario, societies commit to testing, not only their valour and military prowess, but also the values they fight for in the crucible of combat. Any outcomes that arise from such contests, must, it follows, be respected as the verdict of battle. There is plenty of evidence to support this view. The history of Western thinking about war from the classical world to the present day is marked by both a repugnance for the adoption of tactics that circumvent the opportunity for pitched battle, and a readiness to sneer at any victories won by those means as somehow less worthy. In ancient Greece, Odysseus was scorned for his predilection for overcoming his enemies by guile rather than by hand-to-hand combat. In Persia, King Cyrus was similarly lambasted for relying on trickery to overcome his foes “rather than conquering [them] by force in battle”. In the fourth century BC, Alexander the Great valorised victories won by direct confrontation in pitched battles. He responded with contempt when his adviser, Parmenio, proposed launching a night-time ambush on their foes: “The policy you are suggesting is one of bandits and thieves … I am resolved to attack openly and by daylight. I choose to regret my good fortune rather than be ashamed of my victory.” Beyond the classical world, knights in the middle ages were wont to burnish their victories by exaggerating the importance of battles and downplaying the part played by more humdrum modes of warring (such as raiding) in delivering them. These views also carried over into the canon of modern strategic thought. The survival of this way of thinking into the present era is evident in the approbation that greets the use of those modes of fighting (such as the use of guerrilla tactics, terrorism, and drones) that preclude the finality of a decisive victory on the battlefield being achieved by either side. This reflects, I think, a lingering sense that any mode of belligerency that is not geared toward producing victory through the kind of fair fight that a battlefield contest is believed to represent must, in some sense, be morally problematic. And so even though the ideal of decisive victory is best understood as nothing more than a myth, it still matters. It still shapes how we understand, think about and indeed approach war. As such, it continues to guide our thinking about what war can achieve, when it should be employed, by what means it should be conducted and how and when it should be concluded. To imagine that it can simply be struck from our vocabulary, as Obama apparently assumed, is as naive as it is foolish. But recognising this also reveals some unsettling realities. ‘Mowing the lawn’ The ideal of decisive victory, then, is a myth, albeit an enduringly powerful one that continues to shape how we think about war. And this myth poses some dangers. It’s a myth that tempts us to think that war can still be a conclusive way of settling disputes between societies. It invites us to believe that societies can resolve their conflicts by simply fighting them out, with the winner taking all and loser honourably accepting its defeat as the verdict of battle. The problem with this vision is, of course, that it promises too much. War is too blunt an instrument to deliver such a clean ending. In a way, then, this belief sells us a false bill of goods – one that comes at a terrible cost in blood and treasure. One need only look to the plight of the Kurds in Kobani for proof of this. To our detriment, we appear to be both stuck with and trapped by the language of victory. The Israeli strategic doctrine known as “mowing the lawn” provides an intriguing counterpoint to this. Whereas Israeli strategists traditionally focused on procuring decisive battlefield victories against rival state armies, recent experiences in Gaza have led them to adopt a different approach. Instead of supposing that the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) should aim to vanquish its enemies once and for all in direct combat, it is directed toward the pursuit of more modest, contingent objectives. The doctrine counsels that the IDF must treat the threat from Israel’s enemies in the same way that a gardener approaches the mowing of their lawn: that is, as a recurrent task that can never be fully completed but must instead be returned to at regular intervals. As such, it reflects a hard-won acceptance of the fact that Israel will not achieve a final victory over its foes any time soon. In its place, it proposes that the best Israel can hope for is provisional gains – namely, the degradation and short-term containment of its enemies – that require constant and recurrent consolidation. There are clearly very serious problems with this position — problems that I do not wish to deflect from or in any way minimise — but it does raise some interesting possibilities for how we think about victory. Specifically, it provokes us to reflect on what victory might look like if we ceased indexing it to notions of decisiveness and conclusiveness. How might we reconfigure our understanding of victory so that it is coupled to provisional rather than final outcomes? This would presumably involve reframing it in partial and contingent rather than comprehensive terms. There is much to be said for this. But above all else, it would reconnect how we think about victory with the realities of modern warfare and a more sober assessment of the kind of goods it can deliver. My point is not to persuade states to ape Israel’s strategic posture. It is, rather, to encourage reflection on the conundrum that victory in modern war poses. What does winning mean today? Thinking about contemporary armed conflict in terms of victory is problematic because modern warfare is not configured in such a way as to produce what we might regard as a clear-cut victory for one side and an emphatic defeat for the other. Construed this way, victory appears more mythical than real. But even if it is a myth, it colours how we approach contemporary armed conflict today, tempting us to believe that clean endings are still a possibility – when they are evidently not. Victory is, in this sense, a red herring. One solution to this conundrum would be to strike victory from our vocabularies. That is, to simply cease talking about it or in its terms. Yet this is easier said than done. As President Obama discovered, the language of victory is very difficult to circumvent or evade. Just when you think it’s dead, it comes back with even greater force behind it. The dilemma, then, is clear. Victory: can’t live with it, can’t live without it. The challenge arising from this is to rethink what we mean by victory. If, as the historian Christopher Hill once wrote, every generation must rewrite its history anew, the ever-changing nature of war demands that every generation must also rethink its understanding of military victory. (Cian O'Driscoll is Professor of Politics, University of Glasgow) (This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article) (Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL)

Can wars no longer be won?

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/volodymyr-zelensky-says-ukraine-getting-tired-of-trump-scandal-263215">Ukraine's president</a> on Monday renewed his denial of a quid pro quo with Donald Trump over military aid, despite a growing case against the US president in impeachment proceedings in Washington.

"I did not speak with US President Trump in those terms: you give me this, I give you that," Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with European publications including Germany's Der Spiegel magazine.

In remarks published in German, Zelensky said he "did not understand at all" the accusations heard at the hearings and did not "want to give an impression that we are beggars" in Ukraine.

The scandal centres around a phone conversation on July 25 in which the Republican leader is suspected of putting pressure on Ukraine to launch investigations against former Democratic vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who worked for a Ukrainian gas company.&nbsp;

Watch: US Ambassador Volker says he did not know Ukraine corruption probe was tied to Biden

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The key issue is whether Trump set up a "quid pro quo",&nbsp;Latin for seeking one action in exchange for another,&nbsp;with Zelensky by holding back promised US military aid for Ukraine until the Bidens were investigated.

In the interview published on Monday, <a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/donald-trump-releases-record-of-friendly-first-zelensky-call-262449">Zelensky also played down expectations</a> ahead of a summit on December 9 in Paris in which he is set to meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin for the first time.

He said that an end to the conflict with Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine could not be discussed until three preliminary steps had been taken.

He said there should first be a prisoner exchange within a "reasonable time period", followed by a genuine ceasefire and the retreat of all armed forces to allow local elections to be held in the region.

"If these three issues are resolved, then we can see if everyone wants to put an end to the conflict."

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/white-house-adviser-tells-lawmakers-trump-ukraine-call-raised-national-security-concerns-258751">The conflict in Ukraine</a>, which broke out in 2014 after pro-Western politicians took power in Kiev and Russia annexed Crimea, has killed more than 13,000 people.

Ukraine's president on Monday renewed his denial of a quid pro quo with Donald Trump over military aid, despite a growing case against the US president in impeachment proceedings in Washington.

Ukraine's president on Monday renewed his denial of a quid pro quo with Donald Trump over military aid, despite a growing case against the US president in impeachment proceedings in Washington. "I did not speak with US President Trump in those terms: you give me this, I give you that," Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with European publications including Germany's Der Spiegel magazine. In remarks published in German, Zelensky said he "did not understand at all" the accusations heard at the hearings and did not "want to give an impression that we are beggars" in Ukraine. The scandal centres around a phone conversation on July 25 in which the Republican leader is suspected of putting pressure on Ukraine to launch investigations against former Democratic vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who worked for a Ukrainian gas company. Watch: US Ambassador Volker says he did not know Ukraine corruption probe was tied to Biden The key issue is whether Trump set up a "quid pro quo", Latin for seeking one action in exchange for another, with Zelensky by holding back promised US military aid for Ukraine until the Bidens were investigated. In the interview published on Monday, Zelensky also played down expectations ahead of a summit on December 9 in Paris in which he is set to meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin for the first time. He said that an end to the conflict with Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine could not be discussed until three preliminary steps had been taken. He said there should first be a prisoner exchange within a "reasonable time period", followed by a genuine ceasefire and the retreat of all armed forces to allow local elections to be held in the region. "If these three issues are resolved, then we can see if everyone wants to put an end to the conflict." The conflict in Ukraine, which broke out in 2014 after pro-Western politicians took power in Kiev and Russia annexed Crimea, has killed more than 13,000 people.

Ukraine president Zelensky renews denial of quid pro quo with US president Trump

Ten suspected cartel gunmen and four police were killed during a daytime shootout on Saturday in a Mexican town near the US border, days after US President Donald Trump raised bilateral tensions by saying he would designate the gangs as terrorists.

Ten suspected cartel gunmen and four police were killed during a daytime shootout on Saturday in a Mexican town near the US border, days after US President Donald Trump raised bilateral tensions by saying he would designate the gangs as terrorists. The government of the northern state of Coahuila said state police clashed with a group of heavily armed gunmen riding in pickup trucks in the small town of Villa Union, about 40 miles (65 km) southwest of the border city of Piedras Negras. Standing outside the Villa Union mayor's bullet-ridden offices, Coahuila governor Miguel Angel Riquelme told reporters the state had acted "decisively" to tackle the gunmen, who he said had entered from the neighboring state of Tamaulipas. Riquelme said 10 gunmen had been killed, three of them by officers in pursuit of the gang members after the gunfight that claimed the lives of four police and wounded six more. Around midday, heavy gunfire began ringing out in Villa Union, and a convoy of armed pickup trucks could be seen moving around the town, according to video clips posted by social media users. Others showed plumes of smoke rising from the town. Reuters could not vouch for their authenticity. An unspecified number of people were also missing, including some who were at the mayor's office, the governor said. Riquelme said authorities had identified 14 vehicles involved in the attacks and seized more than a dozen guns. The outbreak of violence occurred during a testing week for President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who on Friday said he would not accept any foreign intervention in Mexico to deal with violent criminal gangs after Trump's comments. Lopez Obrador said Mexico would handle the problem, a view echoed by Riquelme as he spoke to reporters. "I don't think that Mexico needs intervention. I think Mexico needs collaboration and cooperation," said Riquelme, whose party is in opposition to Lopez Obrador. "We're convinced that the state has the power to overcome the criminals." In an interview aired on Tuesday, Trump said he planned to designate the cartels as terrorist organizations, sparking concerns the move could serve as a prelude to the United States trying to intervene unilaterally in Mexico. U.S. Attorney General William Barr is due to visit Mexico next week to discuss cooperation over security. Lopez Obrador took office a year ago pledging to pacify the country after more than a decade of gang-fueled violence. A series of recent security lapses has raised questions about the left-leaning administration's strategy. Criticism has focused on the Nov. 4 massacre of nine women and children of U.S.-Mexican origin from Mormon communities in northern Mexico, and the armed forces' release of a captured son of drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman under pressure from cartel gunmen in the city of Culiacan. Coahuila has a history of gang violence, though the homicide total in the state is well below where it was seven years ago. National homicide levels are pushing record levels.

At least 14 killed in bloody gunfight in northern Mexico

A US congressional panel on Friday gave President Donald Trump one week to say whether his legal counsel intends to introduce evidence and call witnesses in upcoming impeachment proceedings that could lead to formal charges of misconduct within a few weeks.

A US congressional panel on Friday gave President Donald Trump one week to say whether his legal counsel intends to introduce evidence and call witnesses in upcoming impeachment proceedings that could lead to formal charges of misconduct within a few weeks. The Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee, which is due to begin weighing possible articles of impeachment against Trump next week, sent a two-page letter to the president setting a deadline of 5 p.m. EDT (2200 GMT) on Dec. 6 for the president's counsel to specify intended actions under the committee's impeachment procedures. The procedures set out rules by which the president can call witnesses, introduce evidence and make presentations. Panel Democratic Chairman Jerrold Nadler set the same deadline for Republican lawmakers on the committee to notify him about intended witnesses and evidence and scheduled a Dec. 9 meeting to consider the matter. The Judiciary panel is expected to hold a series of impeachment proceedings, including an initial hearing on Wednesday at which legal experts are due to testify about the constitutional grounds for impeachment. The committee invited Trump to participate in the hearing and gave him until 6 p.m. EST (2300 GMT) on Sunday to say whether he or his legal team would attend. The impeachment probe is looking into whether Trump abused his power to pressure Ukraine to launch investigations of political rival Joe Biden and a discredited conspiracy theory promoted by Trump that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. After weeks of closed-door witness depositions and televised hearings, three investigating panels led by the House Intelligence Committee are due to release a formal report soon after lawmakers return to Congress on Tuesday from a Thanksgiving recess. The report will outline evidence gathered by lawmakers on the panel, along with those on the Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees. After Wednesday, the Judiciary panel, which could recommend a full House impeachment vote before Christmas, is expected to hold a hearing to examine the evidence report and further proceedings to consider formal articles of impeachment. House Democrats aim to resolve the question of Trump's impeachment by Christmas. If the House impeaches him, the Republican-controlled Senate would hold a trial to determine whether he should be convicted and removed from office. Political analysts say the ultimate verdict will come in next year's U.S. elections for president and Congress, and candidates from both parties have used the impeachment issue to ramp up their campaigns. Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who launched the impeachment inquiry on Sept. 24, on Friday asked supporters in an email from her campaign committee to condemn Trump's actions. "President Trump used taxpayer money to bribe foreign countries to influence the 2020 elections for his own political gain," she said in the email which asked recipients to register their disapproval on her campaign website.

US panel sets deadline for Trump to decide participation in impeachment hearings

US President Donald Trump faced two deadlines in Congress on Sunday as Democrats prepared to shift the focus of their impeachment inquiry from fact-finding to the consideration of possible charges of misconduct over his dealings with Ukraine.

The Democratic-led House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, tasked with considering charges known as articles of impeachment, has given the president until 6 pm EST (2300 GMT) on Sunday to say whether he or his legal counsel will participate in an impeachment hearing on Wednesday.

The hearing, the first in a series of proceedings expected before the committee, will hear testimony on the impeachment process established under the US Constitution from a panel of legal experts that has yet to be named.

Hearings before the committee, which has responsibility for crafting any formal charges against Trump, are a major step toward possible charges. Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who will make the final decision, has not said yet whether the Republican president should be formally impeached. But in a letter to supporters last week, she called for him to be held accountable for his actions.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing and called the impeachment inquiry a witch hunt aimed at unseating a democratically elected president. The White House has not yet indicated whether it will take part in the House Judiciary proceedings.

House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler has also set a 5 pm EST (2200 GMT) deadline on Friday for Trump to say whether he intends to mount a defence at further proceedings expected next week that would examine the evidence against him.

Three investigating panels, led by the House Intelligence Committee, are due to release a formal evidence report this week after lawmakers return to Congress on Tuesday from their Thanksgiving recess. The report will outline evidence gathered by lawmakers on the panel, along with those on the House Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees.

Congressional investigators have been looking into whether Trump abused his power by pressuring Ukraine to launch investigations of former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden, who is running to unseat him in the 2020 presidential election, and a discredited conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 US presidential election.

The president and his Republican allies in Congress say the inquiry has been unfair because it did not allow the White House to have legal counsel present or call witnesses during weeks of closed-door testimony and open hearings before the House Intelligence Committee.

However, Republican lawmakers were able to question witnesses during the closed-door hearings and called three witnesses during the public hearings that wrapped up last week.

"The president may well look at this, or his counsel may well look at this, and say: Why would we want to get in here and legitimize this process when it was made illegitimate at the beginning by shutting us out?" said Republican Representative Tom Cole.

The House Judiciary Committee could vote on whether to recommend articles of impeachment within the next two weeks, setting the stage of a possible impeachment vote by the full House before Christmas, according to Democratic aides.

If the House impeaches Trump, the Republican-controlled Senate would hold a trial to determine whether he should be convicted and removed from office.

US President Donald Trump faced two deadlines in Congress on Sunday as Democrats prepared to shift the focus of their impeachment inquiry from fact-finding to the consideration of possible charges of misconduct over his dealings with Ukraine.

US President Donald Trump faced two deadlines in Congress on Sunday as Democrats prepared to shift the focus of their impeachment inquiry from fact-finding to the consideration of possible charges of misconduct over his dealings with Ukraine. The Democratic-led House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, tasked with considering charges known as articles of impeachment, has given the president until 6 pm EST (2300 GMT) on Sunday to say whether he or his legal counsel will participate in an impeachment hearing on Wednesday. The hearing, the first in a series of proceedings expected before the committee, will hear testimony on the impeachment process established under the US Constitution from a panel of legal experts that has yet to be named. Hearings before the committee, which has responsibility for crafting any formal charges against Trump, are a major step toward possible charges. Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who will make the final decision, has not said yet whether the Republican president should be formally impeached. But in a letter to supporters last week, she called for him to be held accountable for his actions. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and called the impeachment inquiry a witch hunt aimed at unseating a democratically elected president. The White House has not yet indicated whether it will take part in the House Judiciary proceedings. House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler has also set a 5 pm EST (2200 GMT) deadline on Friday for Trump to say whether he intends to mount a defence at further proceedings expected next week that would examine the evidence against him. Three investigating panels, led by the House Intelligence Committee, are due to release a formal evidence report this week after lawmakers return to Congress on Tuesday from their Thanksgiving recess. The report will outline evidence gathered by lawmakers on the panel, along with those on the House Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees. Congressional investigators have been looking into whether Trump abused his power by pressuring Ukraine to launch investigations of former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden, who is running to unseat him in the 2020 presidential election, and a discredited conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 US presidential election. The president and his Republican allies in Congress say the inquiry has been unfair because it did not allow the White House to have legal counsel present or call witnesses during weeks of closed-door testimony and open hearings before the House Intelligence Committee. However, Republican lawmakers were able to question witnesses during the closed-door hearings and called three witnesses during the public hearings that wrapped up last week. "The president may well look at this, or his counsel may well look at this, and say: Why would we want to get in here and legitimize this process when it was made illegitimate at the beginning by shutting us out?" said Republican Representative Tom Cole. The House Judiciary Committee could vote on whether to recommend articles of impeachment within the next two weeks, setting the stage of a possible impeachment vote by the full House before Christmas, according to Democratic aides. If the House impeaches Trump, the Republican-controlled Senate would hold a trial to determine whether he should be convicted and removed from office.

Trump faces two impeachment deadlines as inquiry shifts focus

Hong Kong protesters thank US President Donald Trump. Watch video to know more.

Hong Kong protesters thank US President Donald Trump

Notorious for leaks and chastened by previous security lapses, the White House went to unusual lengths to keep President Donald Trump's Thanksgiving trip to Afghanistan under wraps, devising a cover story for his movements that included posting scripted tweets while he was in the air, administration officials said.

On Thursday, Trump dropped in unannounced on troops at Afghanistan's Bagram military airbase in his first trip to the country and only his second to a war zone during his presidency. He served soldiers a turkey dinner and posed for selfies, before telling reporters that the United States and Taliban hoped to resume peace talks.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the 33-hour roundtrip, which White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said had been weeks in the making, was the administration's success in keeping it secret until shortly before the president left Afghanistan to return home.

Frequently wrong-footed by leaks and Trump's freewheeling use of Twitter, the White House informed only a tight circle of officials about the trip.

On Tuesday, Trump travelled to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida as scheduled, accompanied by the regular caravan of reporters which follows the president on all trips.

When those journalists waited for him to emerge for a Thursday afternoon conference call with the troops, per his official schedule, they learnt that overnight he had flown the 13,400 km (8,331 miles) to Afghanistan to visit them in person.

"It is a dangerous area and he wants to support the troops," Grisham told a small group of correspondents aboard Air Force One on Wednesday evening, explaining why the White House had concealed Trump's true movements.

Only hours before, that second group of reporters had secretly gathered at a parking lot near the Joint Base Andrews outside Washington, a regular departure spot for Trump, from which they were driven in minivans into the complex.

They had been told ahead of time that Trump would be travelling incognito to an undisclosed location.

Once inside the base, all smartphones and any devices that could send a signal were confiscated and not returned until at least two hours after Trump's arrival at Bagram, the largest US base in Afghanistan.

Throughout the 13-hour flight, nobody on board Air Force One had access to their phones, including White House staff, Grisham said. The cabin lights were mostly switched off and window blinds stayed shut.

Last Christmas, en route to a troop visit in Iraq, Air Force One was identified above England by a plane spotter who tweeted a photo of its distinctive turquoise livery, sparking a social media storm. Many speculated then that Trump was on his way to a war zone, pointing to his unusually quiet Twitter account, which had sent dozens of tweets the day before.

This time, Grisham said the White House made arrangements to ensure continuity in the president's Twitter account, which posted happy Thanksgiving tweets as he was in the air, including one thanking the military.

"We just had a nice Thanksgiving dinner," Trump said amid chants of "U-S-A" during his speech at the Bagram base.

"I thought I was going to be doing it someplace else."

Notorious for leaks and chastened by previous security lapses, the White House went to unusual lengths to keep President Donald Trump's Thanksgiving trip to Afghanistan under wraps, devising a cover story for his movements that included posting scripted tweets while he was in the air, administration officials said.

Notorious for leaks and chastened by previous security lapses, the White House went to unusual lengths to keep President Donald Trump's Thanksgiving trip to Afghanistan under wraps, devising a cover story for his movements that included posting scripted tweets while he was in the air, administration officials said. On Thursday, Trump dropped in unannounced on troops at Afghanistan's Bagram military airbase in his first trip to the country and only his second to a war zone during his presidency. He served soldiers a turkey dinner and posed for selfies, before telling reporters that the United States and Taliban hoped to resume peace talks. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the 33-hour roundtrip, which White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said had been weeks in the making, was the administration's success in keeping it secret until shortly before the president left Afghanistan to return home. Frequently wrong-footed by leaks and Trump's freewheeling use of Twitter, the White House informed only a tight circle of officials about the trip. On Tuesday, Trump travelled to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida as scheduled, accompanied by the regular caravan of reporters which follows the president on all trips. When those journalists waited for him to emerge for a Thursday afternoon conference call with the troops, per his official schedule, they learnt that overnight he had flown the 13,400 km (8,331 miles) to Afghanistan to visit them in person. "It is a dangerous area and he wants to support the troops," Grisham told a small group of correspondents aboard Air Force One on Wednesday evening, explaining why the White House had concealed Trump's true movements. Only hours before, that second group of reporters had secretly gathered at a parking lot near the Joint Base Andrews outside Washington, a regular departure spot for Trump, from which they were driven in minivans into the complex. They had been told ahead of time that Trump would be travelling incognito to an undisclosed location. Once inside the base, all smartphones and any devices that could send a signal were confiscated and not returned until at least two hours after Trump's arrival at Bagram, the largest US base in Afghanistan. Throughout the 13-hour flight, nobody on board Air Force One had access to their phones, including White House staff, Grisham said. The cabin lights were mostly switched off and window blinds stayed shut. Last Christmas, en route to a troop visit in Iraq, Air Force One was identified above England by a plane spotter who tweeted a photo of its distinctive turquoise livery, sparking a social media storm. Many speculated then that Trump was on his way to a war zone, pointing to his unusually quiet Twitter account, which had sent dozens of tweets the day before. This time, Grisham said the White House made arrangements to ensure continuity in the president's Twitter account, which posted happy Thanksgiving tweets as he was in the air, including one thanking the military. "We just had a nice Thanksgiving dinner," Trump said amid chants of "U-S-A" during his speech at the Bagram base. "I thought I was going to be doing it someplace else."

No phones, scripted tweets:  How Trump's Afghanistan trip was kept under wraps

A US congressional panel on Friday gave President Donald Trump one week to say whether his legal counsel intends to introduce evidence and call witnesses in upcoming impeachment proceedings that could lead to formal charges of misconduct within a few weeks.

The Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee, which is due to begin weighing possible articles of impeachment against Trump next week, sent a two-page letter to the president setting a deadline of 5 pm EDT (2200 GMT) on December&nbsp;6 for the president's counsel to specify intended actions under the committee's impeachment procedures.

The procedures set out rules by which the president can call witnesses, introduce evidence and make presentations.

Panel Democratic Chairman Jerrold Nadler set the same deadline for Republican lawmakers on the committee to notify him about intended witnesses and evidence and scheduled a December 9 meeting to consider the matter.

The Judiciary panel is expected to hold a series of impeachment proceedings, including an initial hearing on Wednesday at which legal experts are due to testify about the constitutional grounds for impeachment. The committee invited Trump to participate in the hearing and gave him until 6 pm EST (2300 GMT) on Sunday to say whether he or his legal team would attend.

The impeachment probe is looking into whether Trump abused his power to pressure Ukraine to launch investigations of political rival Joe Biden and a discredited conspiracy theory promoted by Trump that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 US presidential election.

After weeks of closed-door witness depositions and televised hearings, three investigating panels led by the House Intelligence Committee are due to release a formal report soon after lawmakers return to Congress on Tuesday from a Thanksgiving recess. The report will outline evidence gathered by lawmakers on the panel, along with those on the Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees.

After Wednesday, the Judiciary panel, which could recommend a full House impeachment vote before Christmas, is expected to hold a hearing to examine the evidence report and further proceedings to consider formal articles of impeachment.

House Democrats aim to resolve the question of Trump's impeachment by Christmas. If the House impeaches him, the Republican-controlled Senate would hold a trial to determine whether he should be convicted and removed from office.

Political analysts say the ultimate verdict will come in next year's US elections for president and Congress, and candidates from both parties have used the impeachment issue to ramp up their campaigns.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who launched the impeachment inquiry on Sept. 24, on Friday asked supporters in an email from her campaign committee to condemn Trump's actions.

"President Trump used taxpayer money to bribe foreign countries to influence the 2020 elections for his own political gain," she said in the email which asked recipients to register their disapproval on her campaign website.

A US congressional panel on Friday gave President Donald Trump one week to say whether his legal counsel intends to introduce evidence and call witnesses in upcoming impeachment proceedings that could lead to formal charges of misconduct within a few weeks. The Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee, which is due to begin weighing possible articles of impeachment against Trump next week, sent a two-page letter to the president setting a deadline of 5 pm EDT (2200 GMT) on December 6 for the president's counsel to specify intended actions under the committee's impeachment procedures. The procedures set out rules by which the president can call witnesses, introduce evidence and make presentations. Panel Democratic Chairman Jerrold Nadler set the same deadline for Republican lawmakers on the committee to notify him about intended witnesses and evidence and scheduled a December 9 meeting to consider the matter. The Judiciary panel is expected to hold a series of impeachment proceedings, including an initial hearing on Wednesday at which legal experts are due to testify about the constitutional grounds for impeachment. The committee invited Trump to participate in the hearing and gave him until 6 pm EST (2300 GMT) on Sunday to say whether he or his legal team would attend. The impeachment probe is looking into whether Trump abused his power to pressure Ukraine to launch investigations of political rival Joe Biden and a discredited conspiracy theory promoted by Trump that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 US presidential election. After weeks of closed-door witness depositions and televised hearings, three investigating panels led by the House Intelligence Committee are due to release a formal report soon after lawmakers return to Congress on Tuesday from a Thanksgiving recess. The report will outline evidence gathered by lawmakers on the panel, along with those on the Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees. After Wednesday, the Judiciary panel, which could recommend a full House impeachment vote before Christmas, is expected to hold a hearing to examine the evidence report and further proceedings to consider formal articles of impeachment. House Democrats aim to resolve the question of Trump's impeachment by Christmas. If the House impeaches him, the Republican-controlled Senate would hold a trial to determine whether he should be convicted and removed from office. Political analysts say the ultimate verdict will come in next year's US elections for president and Congress, and candidates from both parties have used the impeachment issue to ramp up their campaigns. Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who launched the impeachment inquiry on Sept. 24, on Friday asked supporters in an email from her campaign committee to condemn Trump's actions. "President Trump used taxpayer money to bribe foreign countries to influence the 2020 elections for his own political gain," she said in the email which asked recipients to register their disapproval on her campaign website.

Iran on Saturday disputed death tolls issued abroad for the bloodshed that erupted during protests in the country over fuel prices after a rights group said over 160 demonstrators were killed.

The demonstrations flared in mid-November after the price of petrol in the Islamic republic went up overnight by as much as 200 per cent.

Officials in Iran have yet to say how many people died in the ensuing violence that saw banks, petrol pumps and police stations set on fire.

London-based human rights group Amnesty International said in a tweet on Friday that the crackdown claimed the lives of 161 demonstrators.

But Iran's deputy interior minister, Jamal Orf, disputed such figures.

"Statistics by international organisations on those killed in the recent incidents are not credible," he was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA.

Orf accused the sources that reported the figures of "exaggerating" them.

The prosecution service, he added, was set to announce the figures based on those it receives from the coroner's office.

Prior to its latest tweet, Amnesty International said on Monday that 143 demonstrators had been killed in the crackdown, citing what it called "credible reports".

The governments of the United States, France and Germany have condemned Iran over the bloodshed.

The unrest broke out on November 15, hours after it was announced that the price of gas would rise to 15,000 rials per litre (12 US cents) from 10,000 for the first 60 litres, and to 30,000 rials for any extra fuel bought after that each month.

Iran's economy has been battered since last year when President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from a 2015 nuclear agreement and reimposed crippling sanctions on the Islamic republic.

The government in Tehran said proceeds from the fuel price hike would go to the neediest people in the country.

According to IRNA, the payments have since been made in three installations between November 18 and 23. 
&nbsp;

Iran on Saturday disputed death tolls issued abroad for the bloodshed that erupted during protests in the country over fuel prices after a rights group said over 160 demonstrators were killed.

Iran on Saturday disputed death tolls issued abroad for the bloodshed that erupted during protests in the country over fuel prices after a rights group said over 160 demonstrators were killed. The demonstrations flared in mid-November after the price of petrol in the Islamic republic went up overnight by as much as 200 per cent. Officials in Iran have yet to say how many people died in the ensuing violence that saw banks, petrol pumps and police stations set on fire. London-based human rights group Amnesty International said in a tweet on Friday that the crackdown claimed the lives of 161 demonstrators. But Iran's deputy interior minister, Jamal Orf, disputed such figures. "Statistics by international organisations on those killed in the recent incidents are not credible," he was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA. Orf accused the sources that reported the figures of "exaggerating" them. The prosecution service, he added, was set to announce the figures based on those it receives from the coroner's office. Prior to its latest tweet, Amnesty International said on Monday that 143 demonstrators had been killed in the crackdown, citing what it called "credible reports". The governments of the United States, France and Germany have condemned Iran over the bloodshed. The unrest broke out on November 15, hours after it was announced that the price of gas would rise to 15,000 rials per litre (12 US cents) from 10,000 for the first 60 litres, and to 30,000 rials for any extra fuel bought after that each month. Iran's economy has been battered since last year when President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from a 2015 nuclear agreement and reimposed crippling sanctions on the Islamic republic. The government in Tehran said proceeds from the fuel price hike would go to the neediest people in the country. According to IRNA, the payments have since been made in three installations between November 18 and 23.

Iran disputes 'exaggerated' protest death tolls

Secondary-school students and retirees joined forces to protest in Hong Kong on Saturday, the first of <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/china-arrests-belizean-taiwanese-citizens-over-alleged-meddling-in-hong-kong-affairs-265421">several weekend rallies planned across the city</a>, as pro-democracy activists vowed to battle what they say are police brutality and unlawful arrests.

A top Hong Kong official said the government was looking into setting up an independent committee to review the handling of the crisis, which has seen increasingly violent demonstrations since starting more than five months ago.

Hong Kong has seen relative calm since local elections last week delivered an overwhelming victory to pro-democracy candidates. Still, activists appear keen to maintain the momentum of their movement.

"I came out for the peaceful protest in June when there was more than one million people, but the government did not listen to our demands," said a 71-year-old woman in Hong Kong's Central district, who only gave her name as Ponn.

She brought her own plastic stool to join a cross-generational protest of a few hundred people at the city's Chater Garden. Elderly Hong Kongers, some with visors and canes, stood not far from young, black-clad protesters. All listened to pro-democracy speakers in a gathering marked by a festive mood.

"I have seen so much police brutality and unlawful arrests. This is not the Hong Kong I know. I came today because I want the government to know that we are not happy with what they have done to our generation," said Ponn, who attended with her daughter and son-in-law.

Foreign arrests

Demonstrators are angered by what they see as Chinese interference in freedoms promised when Britain returned Hong Kong to Beijing in 1997.

But China denies interfering, and says it is committed to the "one country, two systems" formula put in place at that time. It has blamed foreign forces for fomenting unrest.

On Saturday, citing authorities, the Communist party newspaper of the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou said police had arrested a Belizean citizen for allegedly colluding with people in the United States to meddle in Hong Kong affairs.

Separately, the newspaper said a Taiwanese man, Lee Meng-Chu, was arrested by police in nearby Shenzhen on Oct. 31, for allegedly stealing state secrets for foreign forces after he made a trip to Hong Kong in August to support "anti-China" activities.

In Hong Kong, the city government is looking into setting up an independent committee to review the handling of the crisis, Matthew Cheung, Chief Secretary for Administration, told reporters when asked about an independent review committee.

"We are looking for relevant candidates and we have already started preparatory work, so we hope we will make some progress in the short term," Cheung said.

Cheung's comment came in response to a question that did not specify police or government handling, but one of the protesters' demands is for an independent inquiry into allegations of police brutality. Some critics on social media have said that such a committee would fall short of the independent investigation they have been demanding.

In an opinion piece in the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post newspaper on Saturday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, also called for an investigation into allegations of excessive police force.

"I appeal the government to take important confidence-building measures, including a proper independent and impartial judge-led investigation into reports of excessive use of force by the police," Bachelet wrote.

'Glory to Hong Kong'

In Saturday's first rally, at one point the crowd in the park rose to sing "Glory to Hong Kong", which has become the unofficial anthem of protests. Many of them put their hands in the air with five fingers outstretched, a symbol of the pro-democracy movement.

"My mum asked me to come and protect her. So I came with my husband. It has been quiet after the district elections and that is unexpected," senior citizen protester Ponn's 26-year-old daughter told Reuters.

"We should not stop there, I came today because we have to keep fighting."

Some of the young protesters waved American flags, a sign of appreciation after U.S. President Donald Trump this week signed into law bills that back the protesters and threaten China with possible sanctions on human rights.

A 70-year-old retiree in a blue aviator sunglasses and a grey tracksuit, who gave his name as Ko, said seniors could offer guidance to the younger protesters.

"Starting from day one I have been involved in this movement and there is no reason to stop now," said Ko.

"Today is a cross-age group meeting and there are a lot of middle school students ... We are here to give them advice and moral support. I think they need it."

Secondary-school students and retirees joined forces to protest in Hong Kong on Saturday, the first of several weekend rallies planned across the city, as pro-democracy activists vowed to battle what they say are police brutality and unlawful arrests.

Secondary-school students and retirees joined forces to protest in Hong Kong on Saturday, the first of several weekend rallies planned across the city, as pro-democracy activists vowed to battle what they say are police brutality and unlawful arrests. A top Hong Kong official said the government was looking into setting up an independent committee to review the handling of the crisis, which has seen increasingly violent demonstrations since starting more than five months ago. Hong Kong has seen relative calm since local elections last week delivered an overwhelming victory to pro-democracy candidates. Still, activists appear keen to maintain the momentum of their movement. "I came out for the peaceful protest in June when there was more than one million people, but the government did not listen to our demands," said a 71-year-old woman in Hong Kong's Central district, who only gave her name as Ponn. She brought her own plastic stool to join a cross-generational protest of a few hundred people at the city's Chater Garden. Elderly Hong Kongers, some with visors and canes, stood not far from young, black-clad protesters. All listened to pro-democracy speakers in a gathering marked by a festive mood. "I have seen so much police brutality and unlawful arrests. This is not the Hong Kong I know. I came today because I want the government to know that we are not happy with what they have done to our generation," said Ponn, who attended with her daughter and son-in-law. Foreign arrests Demonstrators are angered by what they see as Chinese interference in freedoms promised when Britain returned Hong Kong to Beijing in 1997. But China denies interfering, and says it is committed to the "one country, two systems" formula put in place at that time. It has blamed foreign forces for fomenting unrest. On Saturday, citing authorities, the Communist party newspaper of the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou said police had arrested a Belizean citizen for allegedly colluding with people in the United States to meddle in Hong Kong affairs. Separately, the newspaper said a Taiwanese man, Lee Meng-Chu, was arrested by police in nearby Shenzhen on Oct. 31, for allegedly stealing state secrets for foreign forces after he made a trip to Hong Kong in August to support "anti-China" activities. In Hong Kong, the city government is looking into setting up an independent committee to review the handling of the crisis, Matthew Cheung, Chief Secretary for Administration, told reporters when asked about an independent review committee. "We are looking for relevant candidates and we have already started preparatory work, so we hope we will make some progress in the short term," Cheung said. Cheung's comment came in response to a question that did not specify police or government handling, but one of the protesters' demands is for an independent inquiry into allegations of police brutality. Some critics on social media have said that such a committee would fall short of the independent investigation they have been demanding. In an opinion piece in the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post newspaper on Saturday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, also called for an investigation into allegations of excessive police force. "I appeal the government to take important confidence-building measures, including a proper independent and impartial judge-led investigation into reports of excessive use of force by the police," Bachelet wrote. 'Glory to Hong Kong' In Saturday's first rally, at one point the crowd in the park rose to sing "Glory to Hong Kong", which has become the unofficial anthem of protests. Many of them put their hands in the air with five fingers outstretched, a symbol of the pro-democracy movement. "My mum asked me to come and protect her. So I came with my husband. It has been quiet after the district elections and that is unexpected," senior citizen protester Ponn's 26-year-old daughter told Reuters. "We should not stop there, I came today because we have to keep fighting." Some of the young protesters waved American flags, a sign of appreciation after U.S. President Donald Trump this week signed into law bills that back the protesters and threaten China with possible sanctions on human rights. A 70-year-old retiree in a blue aviator sunglasses and a grey tracksuit, who gave his name as Ko, said seniors could offer guidance to the younger protesters. "Starting from day one I have been involved in this movement and there is no reason to stop now," said Ko. "Today is a cross-age group meeting and there are a lot of middle school students ... We are here to give them advice and moral support. I think they need it."

Hong Kong seniors take to streets to back students as activists decry police

Notorious for leaks and chastened by previous security lapses, the White House went to unusual lengths to keep President Donald Trump's Thanksgiving trip to <a href="https://www.wionews.com/south-asia/taliban-say-they-are-ready-to-resume-peace-talks-with-us-report-265286">Afghanistan </a>under wraps, devising a cover story for his movements that included posting scripted tweets while he was in the air, administration officials said.

On Thursday, <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/taliban-wants-to-make-a-deal-trump-in-afghanistan-265151">Trump </a>dropped in unannounced on troops at Afghanistan's Bagram military airbase in his first trip to the country and only his second to a war zone during his presidency. He served soldiers a turkey dinner and posed for selfies, before telling reporters that the United States and Taliban hoped to resume peace talks.

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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Just returned to the United States after spending a GREAT Thanksgiving with our Courageous American Warriors in Afghanistan! <a href="https://t.co/b2vgY5BH6z">pic.twitter.com/b2vgY5BH6z</a>
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1200415623798501378?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 29, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the 33-hour roundtrip, which White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said had been weeks in the making, was the administration's success in keeping it secret until shortly before the president left Afghanistan to return home.

Frequently wrong-footed by leaks and Trump's freewheeling use of Twitter, the White House informed only a tight circle of officials about the trip.

On Tuesday, Trump travelled to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida as scheduled, accompanied by the regular caravan of reporters which follows the president on all trips.

When those journalists waited for him to emerge for a Thursday afternoon conference call with the troops, per his official schedule, they learnt that overnight he had flown the 13,400 km (8,331 miles) to Afghanistan to visit them in person.

"It is a dangerous area and he wants to support the troops," Grisham told a small group of correspondents aboard Air Force One on Wednesday evening, explaining why the White House had concealed Trump's true movements.

Only hours before, that second group of reporters had secretly gathered at a parking lot near the Joint Base Andrews outside Washington, a regular departure spot for Trump, from which they were driven in minivans into the complex.

They had been told ahead of time that Trump would be travelling incognito to an undisclosed location.

Once inside the base, all smartphones and any devices that could send a signal were confiscated and not returned until at least two hours after Trump's arrival at Bagram, the largest US&nbsp;base in Afghanistan.

Throughout the 13-hour flight, nobody on board Air Force One had access to their phones, including White House staff, Grisham said. The cabin lights were mostly switched off and window blinds stayed shut.

Last Christmas, en route to a troop visit in Iraq, Air Force One was identified above England by a plane spotter who tweeted a photo of its distinctive turquoise livery, sparking a social media storm. Many speculated then that Trump was on his way to a war zone, pointing to his unusually quiet Twitter account, which had sent dozens of tweets the day before.

This time, Grisham said the White House made arrangements to ensure continuity in the president's Twitter account, which posted happy Thanksgiving tweets as he was in the air, including one thanking the military.

"We just had a nice Thanksgiving dinner," Trump said amid chants of "U-S-A" during his speech at the Bagram base.

"I thought I was going to be doing it someplace else."

Notorious for leaks and chastened by previous security lapses, the White House went to unusual lengths to keep President Donald Trump's Thanksgiving trip to Afghanistan under wraps, devising a cover story for his movements that included posting scripted tweets while he was in the air, administration officials said. On Thursday, Trump dropped in unannounced on troops at Afghanistan's Bagram military airbase in his first trip to the country and only his second to a war zone during his presidency. He served soldiers a turkey dinner and posed for selfies, before telling reporters that the United States and Taliban hoped to resume peace talks. Just returned to the United States after spending a GREAT Thanksgiving with our Courageous American Warriors in Afghanistan! pic.twitter.com/b2vgY5BH6z — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2019 × Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the 33-hour roundtrip, which White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said had been weeks in the making, was the administration's success in keeping it secret until shortly before the president left Afghanistan to return home. Frequently wrong-footed by leaks and Trump's freewheeling use of Twitter, the White House informed only a tight circle of officials about the trip. On Tuesday, Trump travelled to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida as scheduled, accompanied by the regular caravan of reporters which follows the president on all trips. When those journalists waited for him to emerge for a Thursday afternoon conference call with the troops, per his official schedule, they learnt that overnight he had flown the 13,400 km (8,331 miles) to Afghanistan to visit them in person. "It is a dangerous area and he wants to support the troops," Grisham told a small group of correspondents aboard Air Force One on Wednesday evening, explaining why the White House had concealed Trump's true movements. Only hours before, that second group of reporters had secretly gathered at a parking lot near the Joint Base Andrews outside Washington, a regular departure spot for Trump, from which they were driven in minivans into the complex. They had been told ahead of time that Trump would be travelling incognito to an undisclosed location. Once inside the base, all smartphones and any devices that could send a signal were confiscated and not returned until at least two hours after Trump's arrival at Bagram, the largest US base in Afghanistan. Throughout the 13-hour flight, nobody on board Air Force One had access to their phones, including White House staff, Grisham said. The cabin lights were mostly switched off and window blinds stayed shut. Last Christmas, en route to a troop visit in Iraq, Air Force One was identified above England by a plane spotter who tweeted a photo of its distinctive turquoise livery, sparking a social media storm. Many speculated then that Trump was on his way to a war zone, pointing to his unusually quiet Twitter account, which had sent dozens of tweets the day before. This time, Grisham said the White House made arrangements to ensure continuity in the president's Twitter account, which posted happy Thanksgiving tweets as he was in the air, including one thanking the military. "We just had a nice Thanksgiving dinner," Trump said amid chants of "U-S-A" during his speech at the Bagram base. "I thought I was going to be doing it someplace else."

No phones, scripted tweets: How Trump's Afghanistan trip was kept under wraps

Donald Trump visits US troops in Afghanistan on Thanksgiving, Watch video to know more.

Donald Trump visits US troops in Afghanistan on Thanksgiving

This segment of WION brings to you top stories of the morning from across the globe. Watch this video to get updated with the latest information.

WION Speed News: Watch top national and international news of the morning - November 29th, 2019

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Friday it would be "best" if US President Donald Trump does not get involved in Britain's election when he visits London for a NATO summit next week.

Trump waded into the election in October by saying opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn would be "so bad" for Britain and that Johnson should agree a pact with Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage.

But senior Conservatives are nervous that Trump could upset the campaign when in London, just over a week before the December&nbsp;12 election which polls indicate Johnson is on course to win.

"What we don't do traditionally as loving allies and friends, what we don't do traditionally, is get involved in each other's election campaigns," Johnson, 55, told LBC radio.

"The best (thing) when you have close friends and allies like the US and the UK is for neither side to get involved in each other's election."

Johnson has said that, if he retains power, he will deliver Brexit by Jan. 31 -- after nearly four years of political crisis following a 2016 referendum in which Britons voted to leave the European Union.

He said he wanted to keep in place government preparations for a possible no-deal Brexit - under which Britain would leave without agreement on the terms with Brussels and potentially expose itself to more economic uncertainty - but that he expected to secure a trade deal with the EU by the end of 2020.

"Many of those preparations will be extremely valuable as we come out of EU arrangements anyway," he told reporters.

NHA 'not for sale'

The US president, who is due to arrive on Monday, has cast Johnson as "Britain's Trump" and during a previous visit criticised Johnson's predecessor Theresa May over her Brexit policy.

Labour's Corbyn has said Johnson will sell off parts of Britain's widely cherished health service to US businesses after Brexit, but Johnson denied this. Trump previously said everything including health should be on the table in trade talks, though he later said health would not be.

Johnson said he would use Brexit to introduce new state aid rules, change state purchasing policies and reform farming so that public bodies aim to "buy British" goods.

"The NHS is not for sale," he said.

Taking questions from LBC listeners, he declined to say how many children he had or whether he would have any more.

Johnson, 55, is living at the prime minister's Downing Street residence with his partner Carrie Symonds after separating from his wife last year.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Friday it would be "best" if US President Donald Trump does not get involved in Britain's election when he visits London for a NATO summit next week.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Friday it would be "best" if US President Donald Trump does not get involved in Britain's election when he visits London for a NATO summit next week. Trump waded into the election in October by saying opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn would be "so bad" for Britain and that Johnson should agree a pact with Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage. But senior Conservatives are nervous that Trump could upset the campaign when in London, just over a week before the December 12 election which polls indicate Johnson is on course to win. "What we don't do traditionally as loving allies and friends, what we don't do traditionally, is get involved in each other's election campaigns," Johnson, 55, told LBC radio. "The best (thing) when you have close friends and allies like the US and the UK is for neither side to get involved in each other's election." Johnson has said that, if he retains power, he will deliver Brexit by Jan. 31 -- after nearly four years of political crisis following a 2016 referendum in which Britons voted to leave the European Union. He said he wanted to keep in place government preparations for a possible no-deal Brexit - under which Britain would leave without agreement on the terms with Brussels and potentially expose itself to more economic uncertainty - but that he expected to secure a trade deal with the EU by the end of 2020. "Many of those preparations will be extremely valuable as we come out of EU arrangements anyway," he told reporters. NHA 'not for sale' The US president, who is due to arrive on Monday, has cast Johnson as "Britain's Trump" and during a previous visit criticised Johnson's predecessor Theresa May over her Brexit policy. Labour's Corbyn has said Johnson will sell off parts of Britain's widely cherished health service to US businesses after Brexit, but Johnson denied this. Trump previously said everything including health should be on the table in trade talks, though he later said health would not be. Johnson said he would use Brexit to introduce new state aid rules, change state purchasing policies and reform farming so that public bodies aim to "buy British" goods. "The NHS is not for sale," he said. Taking questions from LBC listeners, he declined to say how many children he had or whether he would have any more. Johnson, 55, is living at the prime minister's Downing Street residence with his partner Carrie Symonds after separating from his wife last year.

It would be 'best' if Trump doesn't get involved in Britain's election: Boris Johnson

US and China clash over Hong Kong in the midst of trade talks. Watch video to know more.

US and China clash over Hong Kong in the midst of trade talks

The Taliban said on Friday they were ready to restart <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/after-trumps-statement-taliban-say-way-too-early-to-speak-of-resuming-talks-with-us-265242">peace talks with the United States</a>, a day after President Donald Trump visited US troops in Afghanistan and said he believed the radical group would agree to a ceasefire.

Trump's surprise Thanksgiving Day visit was his first to Afghanistan since becoming president and came a week after a prisoner swap between Washington and Kabul that raised hopes for a long-elusive peace deal to end the 18-year war.

"The Taliban wants to make a deal and we are meeting with them," Trump told reporters after arriving in Afghanistan on Thursday.

"We say it has to be a ceasefire and they didn't want to do a ceasefire and now they want to do a ceasefire, I believe. It will probably work out that way," he said.

Trump cancelled peace negotiations in September after the militant group claimed responsibility for an attack in Kabul that killed 12 people, including an American soldier.

Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the hardline Islamist insurgent group, said on Friday they were "ready to restart the talks".

"Our stance is still the same. If peace talks start, it will be resumed from the stage where it had stopped," Mujahid told Reuters.

Taliban leaders have told Reuters that the group has been holding meetings with senior US officials in Doha since last weekend, adding they could soon resume formal peace talks.

"We are hoping that Trump's visit to Afghanistan will prove that he is serious to start talks again. We don't think he has not much of a choice," said a senior Taliban commander on conditions of anonymity.

Trump did not answer reporters' questions when he returned on Friday morning to Florida, where he is spending the US Thanksgiving holiday weekend away from Washington.

There are currently about 13,000 US forces as well as thousands of other NATO troops in Afghanistan, 18 years after a US-led coalition invaded the country following September&nbsp;11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks on the United States.

About 2,400 US service members have been killed in the course of the Afghan conflict.

A draft accord agreed in September would have thousands of American troops withdrawn in exchange for guarantees that Afghanistan would not be used as a base for militant attacks on the United States or its allies.

Still, many US officials doubt the Taliban could be relied upon to prevent al Qaeda from again plotting attacks against the United States from Afghan soil.

(Reporting by Abdul Qadir Sediqi, Humeyra Pamuk and&nbsp;

The Taliban said on Friday they were ready to restart peace talks with the United States, a day after President Donald Trump visited US troops in Afghanistan and said he believed the radical group would agree to a ceasefire.

The Taliban said on Friday they were ready to restart peace talks with the United States, a day after President Donald Trump visited US troops in Afghanistan and said he believed the radical group would agree to a ceasefire. Trump's surprise Thanksgiving Day visit was his first to Afghanistan since becoming president and came a week after a prisoner swap between Washington and Kabul that raised hopes for a long-elusive peace deal to end the 18-year war. "The Taliban wants to make a deal and we are meeting with them," Trump told reporters after arriving in Afghanistan on Thursday. "We say it has to be a ceasefire and they didn't want to do a ceasefire and now they want to do a ceasefire, I believe. It will probably work out that way," he said. Trump cancelled peace negotiations in September after the militant group claimed responsibility for an attack in Kabul that killed 12 people, including an American soldier. Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the hardline Islamist insurgent group, said on Friday they were "ready to restart the talks". "Our stance is still the same. If peace talks start, it will be resumed from the stage where it had stopped," Mujahid told Reuters. Taliban leaders have told Reuters that the group has been holding meetings with senior US officials in Doha since last weekend, adding they could soon resume formal peace talks. "We are hoping that Trump's visit to Afghanistan will prove that he is serious to start talks again. We don't think he has not much of a choice," said a senior Taliban commander on conditions of anonymity. Trump did not answer reporters' questions when he returned on Friday morning to Florida, where he is spending the US Thanksgiving holiday weekend away from Washington. There are currently about 13,000 US forces as well as thousands of other NATO troops in Afghanistan, 18 years after a US-led coalition invaded the country following September 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks on the United States. About 2,400 US service members have been killed in the course of the Afghan conflict. A draft accord agreed in September would have thousands of American troops withdrawn in exchange for guarantees that Afghanistan would not be used as a base for militant attacks on the United States or its allies. Still, many US officials doubt the Taliban could be relied upon to prevent al Qaeda from again plotting attacks against the United States from Afghan soil. (Reporting by Abdul Qadir Sediqi, Humeyra Pamuk and

After Trump's surprise visit to Afghanistan, Taliban say they are ready to resume peace talks

Spain's environment minister on Friday blasted the "absolutely irresponsible attitude" of US President Donald Trump's administration regarding climate change, just days before an annual climate change conference opens in Madrid.

The United States earlier this month started the process of withdrawing from the 2015 Paris climate accord, making the world's largest economy the sole outlier from the agreement.

Trump, who took office in 2017, has also sought to block California from setting tighter standards on car emissions and moved to let states set their own standards on existing coal-fired power plants.

"We have an absolutely irresponsible attitude on the part of the Trump administration," Environment Minister Teresa Ribera said during an interview with Spanish public television.

An attitude which is "irresponsible in the eyes of the planet as a whole, because what the world's biggest economy does... affects us all, but irresponsible as well for the interests of American society," she added.

"The international community found a way to say 'no, it's important to continue to work, it's important to continue to coordinate actions', nobody is formally following President Trump, we are seeing a positive reaction."

Spain's Socialist government offered to host this year's UN climate conference, known as COP25, after the event's original host Chile withdrew last month due to deadly riots over economic inequality.

Spanish authorities expect some 25,000 participants and 1,500 journalists from around the world to attend the two-week gathering, which gets underway on Monday in Madrid.

The US will be officially out of the Paris climate accord on Nov 4, 2020, one day after a presidential election in which Trump is seeking a second term.&nbsp;

Spain's environment minister on Friday blasted the "absolutely irresponsible attitude" of US President Donald Trump's administration regarding climate change, just days before an annual climate change conference opens in Madrid.

Spain's environment minister on Friday blasted the "absolutely irresponsible attitude" of US President Donald Trump's administration regarding climate change, just days before an annual climate change conference opens in Madrid. The United States earlier this month started the process of withdrawing from the 2015 Paris climate accord, making the world's largest economy the sole outlier from the agreement. Trump, who took office in 2017, has also sought to block California from setting tighter standards on car emissions and moved to let states set their own standards on existing coal-fired power plants. "We have an absolutely irresponsible attitude on the part of the Trump administration," Environment Minister Teresa Ribera said during an interview with Spanish public television. An attitude which is "irresponsible in the eyes of the planet as a whole, because what the world's biggest economy does... affects us all, but irresponsible as well for the interests of American society," she added. "The international community found a way to say 'no, it's important to continue to work, it's important to continue to coordinate actions', nobody is formally following President Trump, we are seeing a positive reaction." Spain's Socialist government offered to host this year's UN climate conference, known as COP25, after the event's original host Chile withdrew last month due to deadly riots over economic inequality. Spanish authorities expect some 25,000 participants and 1,500 journalists from around the world to attend the two-week gathering, which gets underway on Monday in Madrid. The US will be officially out of the Paris climate accord on Nov 4, 2020, one day after a presidential election in which Trump is seeking a second term.

Spain blasts 'irresponsible' US attitude on climate change

Chinese telecoms giant Huawei is preparing a legal counterpunch against new moves by American regulators to bar the company from accessing $8.5 billion in US federal funds for services and equipment, a report said Friday.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last week branded Huawei and its Chinese rival ZTE as threats to US national security and blocked them from the fund.

It also proposed that other service providers be required to cancel or replace existing services and equipment from the companies.

Huawei plans to file a lawsuit in the United States next week, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing unidentified sources.

A Huawei spokeswoman declined to comment but the company has invited AFP and other media to its headquarters in the southern city of Shenzhen next Thursday for an unspecified announcement.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement explaining the latest move that Huawei and ZTE "have close ties to China's communist government and military apparatus."

In a statement last week, Huawei said the FCC decision was "based on selective information, innuendo and mistaken assumptions" and that blocking access to the fund will hurt American consumers.

The Universal Service Fund is used to subsidise telecommunication services and equipment mainly in rural areas of the United States, a market where Huawei gear has established a presence despite the growing US pressure on the company.

President Donald Trump moved in May to block American companies from doing business with Huawei, which US officials accuse of violating US sanctions on Iran.

Trump has since offered temporary reprieves for Huawei to allow service providers covering remote rural areas time to comply with the ban, US officials say.

ZTE came close to collapse last year after American companies were prevented from selling it vital components over its continued dealings with Iran and North Korea.

Trump later allowed ZTE to resume imports under tough conditions.

Huawei's chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, who is also the daughter of the company's founder and CEO, was arrested in Canada last year and is now fighting extradition to the United States on fraud and conspiracy charges tied to US sanctions.

Chinese telecoms giant Huawei is preparing a legal counterpunch against new moves by American regulators to bar the company from accessing $8.5 billion in US federal funds for services and equipment, a report said Friday.

Chinese telecoms giant Huawei is preparing a legal counterpunch against new moves by American regulators to bar the company from accessing $8.5 billion in US federal funds for services and equipment, a report said Friday. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last week branded Huawei and its Chinese rival ZTE as threats to US national security and blocked them from the fund. It also proposed that other service providers be required to cancel or replace existing services and equipment from the companies. Huawei plans to file a lawsuit in the United States next week, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing unidentified sources. A Huawei spokeswoman declined to comment but the company has invited AFP and other media to its headquarters in the southern city of Shenzhen next Thursday for an unspecified announcement. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement explaining the latest move that Huawei and ZTE "have close ties to China's communist government and military apparatus." In a statement last week, Huawei said the FCC decision was "based on selective information, innuendo and mistaken assumptions" and that blocking access to the fund will hurt American consumers. The Universal Service Fund is used to subsidise telecommunication services and equipment mainly in rural areas of the United States, a market where Huawei gear has established a presence despite the growing US pressure on the company. President Donald Trump moved in May to block American companies from doing business with Huawei, which US officials accuse of violating US sanctions on Iran. Trump has since offered temporary reprieves for Huawei to allow service providers covering remote rural areas time to comply with the ban, US officials say. ZTE came close to collapse last year after American companies were prevented from selling it vital components over its continued dealings with Iran and North Korea. Trump later allowed ZTE to resume imports under tough conditions. Huawei's chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, who is also the daughter of the company's founder and CEO, was arrested in Canada last year and is now fighting extradition to the United States on fraud and conspiracy charges tied to US sanctions.

Huawei plans legal challenge to latest US pressure: report

Trump signs Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. Watch video to know more.

Trump signs Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act

WION Speed News: Watch top national and international news of the morning - November 28th, 2019

China warned the United States on Thursday that it would take "firm countermeasures" in response to US legislation backing anti-government protesters in Hong Kong, and said attempts to interfere in the<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/hong-kong-police-enter-ruined-polytechnic-university-265013"> Chinese-ruled city were doomed to fail</a>.

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed into law congressional legislation which supported the protesters, despite angry objections from Beijing, with which he is seeking a deal to end a damaging trade war.

Protesters in Hong Kong responded by staging a "Thanksgiving" rally, with thousands, some draped in US flags, gathering in the heart of the city.

"The rationale for us having this rally is to show our gratitude and thank the US Congress and also President Trump for passing the bill," said 23-year-old Sunny Cheung, a member of the student group that lobbied for the legislation.

"We are really grateful about that and we really appreciate the effort made by Americans who support Hong Kong, who stand with Hong Kong, who do not choose to side with Beijing," he said, urging other countries to pass similar legislation.

The law requires the State Department to certify, at least annually, that Hong Kong is autonomous enough to justify favourable US trading terms that have helped it become a world financial centre.

It also threatens sanctions for human rights violations.

The Chinese foreign ministry said the United States would shoulder the consequences of China's countermeasures if it continued to "act arbitrarily" in regards to Hong Kong.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/china-summons-us-envoy-after-trump-signs-hong-kong-democracy-act-265018">summoned US Ambassador Terry Branstad</a> and demanded that Washington immediately stop interfering in China's domestic affairs.

Hong Kong's Beijing-backed government said the legislation sent the wrong signal to demonstrators and "clearly interfered" with the city's internal affairs.

China is considering barring the drafters of the legislation, whose US Senate sponsor is Florida Republican Marco Rubio, from entering mainland China as well as Hong Kong and Macau, Xu Xijin, the editor of China's Global Times tabloid, said on Twitter.

'Sinister intentions'

More than 5,800 people have been arrested since the unrest broke out in June over a proposal to allow extraditions to mainland China, the numbers grew in October and November as violence escalated.

Demonstrators are angry at police violence and what they see as Chinese meddling in freedoms promised to Hong Kong when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997, such as an independent judiciary.

China says it is committed to the "one country, two systems" formula put in place at the handover, and blames foreign forces for fomenting the unrest, an allegation it repeated in response to the US law.

"This so-called legislation will only strengthen the resolve of the Chinese people, including the Hong Kong people, and raise awareness of the sinister intentions and hegemonic nature of the US," the foreign ministry said. "The US plot is doomed."

Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang declined to comment on any countermeasures planned by Beijing.

"You better stay tuned, and follow up on this," he said. "What will come will come."

Gao Feng, a spokesman for China's commerce ministry, did not comment directly on whether the law would affect trade talks, saying there were no new details of their progress to disclose. Some analysts say any move to end Hong Kong's special treatment could harm the United States, which has benefited from business-friendly conditions in the territory.

Lull in violence

Anti-government protests have roiled the former British colony for six months, at times forcing businesses, government, schools and even the international airport to close.

Hong Kong has enjoyed a rare lull in violence over the past week, with local elections on Sunday delivering a landslide victory to pro-democracy candidates.

Prominent activists Joshua Wong and Denise Ho addressed the rally on Thursday night, thanking frontline protesters for the passage of the bill. Crowds sang the protest anthem "Glory to Hong Kong", waving their phone torches.

Several hundred people also gathered outside the Polytechnic University, which police entered after a nearly two-week siege.

"The situation in Poly U is still a disaster," said 30-year-old Ng, dressed in black and wearing a surgical mask. "We are out to show we will never forget the Poly U incident."

The university became a battleground in mid-November when protesters barricaded themselves in and clashed with riot police in a hail of petrol bombs, water cannon and tear gas. About 1,100 people were arrested last week.

It was unclear whether any protesters remained on campus as about 100 plainclothes police moved in on Thursday morning to collect evidence and remove dangerous items such as petrol bombs.

Police said they found more than 3,000 molotov cocktails and hundreds of bottles of corrosive liquids.

"The operation is going to finish today," said Assistant Commissioner of Police (Operations) Chow Yat-ming.

He urged any remaining protesters to seek medical treatment, saying arrests were not a priority, though police were seen brushing molotov cocktails for fingerprints earlier in the day.

China warned the United States on Thursday that it would take "firm countermeasures" in response to US legislation backing anti-government protesters in Hong Kong, and said attempts to interfere in the Chinese-ruled city were doomed to fail.

China warned the United States on Thursday that it would take "firm countermeasures" in response to US legislation backing anti-government protesters in Hong Kong, and said attempts to interfere in the Chinese-ruled city were doomed to fail. US President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed into law congressional legislation which supported the protesters, despite angry objections from Beijing, with which he is seeking a deal to end a damaging trade war. Protesters in Hong Kong responded by staging a "Thanksgiving" rally, with thousands, some draped in US flags, gathering in the heart of the city. "The rationale for us having this rally is to show our gratitude and thank the US Congress and also President Trump for passing the bill," said 23-year-old Sunny Cheung, a member of the student group that lobbied for the legislation. "We are really grateful about that and we really appreciate the effort made by Americans who support Hong Kong, who stand with Hong Kong, who do not choose to side with Beijing," he said, urging other countries to pass similar legislation. The law requires the State Department to certify, at least annually, that Hong Kong is autonomous enough to justify favourable US trading terms that have helped it become a world financial centre. It also threatens sanctions for human rights violations. The Chinese foreign ministry said the United States would shoulder the consequences of China's countermeasures if it continued to "act arbitrarily" in regards to Hong Kong. Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng summoned US Ambassador Terry Branstad and demanded that Washington immediately stop interfering in China's domestic affairs. Hong Kong's Beijing-backed government said the legislation sent the wrong signal to demonstrators and "clearly interfered" with the city's internal affairs. China is considering barring the drafters of the legislation, whose US Senate sponsor is Florida Republican Marco Rubio, from entering mainland China as well as Hong Kong and Macau, Xu Xijin, the editor of China's Global Times tabloid, said on Twitter. 'Sinister intentions' More than 5,800 people have been arrested since the unrest broke out in June over a proposal to allow extraditions to mainland China, the numbers grew in October and November as violence escalated. Demonstrators are angry at police violence and what they see as Chinese meddling in freedoms promised to Hong Kong when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997, such as an independent judiciary. China says it is committed to the "one country, two systems" formula put in place at the handover, and blames foreign forces for fomenting the unrest, an allegation it repeated in response to the US law. "This so-called legislation will only strengthen the resolve of the Chinese people, including the Hong Kong people, and raise awareness of the sinister intentions and hegemonic nature of the US," the foreign ministry said. "The US plot is doomed." Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang declined to comment on any countermeasures planned by Beijing. "You better stay tuned, and follow up on this," he said. "What will come will come." Gao Feng, a spokesman for China's commerce ministry, did not comment directly on whether the law would affect trade talks, saying there were no new details of their progress to disclose. Some analysts say any move to end Hong Kong's special treatment could harm the United States, which has benefited from business-friendly conditions in the territory. Lull in violence Anti-government protests have roiled the former British colony for six months, at times forcing businesses, government, schools and even the international airport to close. Hong Kong has enjoyed a rare lull in violence over the past week, with local elections on Sunday delivering a landslide victory to pro-democracy candidates. Prominent activists Joshua Wong and Denise Ho addressed the rally on Thursday night, thanking frontline protesters for the passage of the bill. Crowds sang the protest anthem "Glory to Hong Kong", waving their phone torches. Several hundred people also gathered outside the Polytechnic University, which police entered after a nearly two-week siege. "The situation in Poly U is still a disaster," said 30-year-old Ng, dressed in black and wearing a surgical mask. "We are out to show we will never forget the Poly U incident." The university became a battleground in mid-November when protesters barricaded themselves in and clashed with riot police in a hail of petrol bombs, water cannon and tear gas. About 1,100 people were arrested last week. It was unclear whether any protesters remained on campus as about 100 plainclothes police moved in on Thursday morning to collect evidence and remove dangerous items such as petrol bombs. Police said they found more than 3,000 molotov cocktails and hundreds of bottles of corrosive liquids. "The operation is going to finish today," said Assistant Commissioner of Police (Operations) Chow Yat-ming. He urged any remaining protesters to seek medical treatment, saying arrests were not a priority, though police were seen brushing molotov cocktails for fingerprints earlier in the day.

Draped in US flag, protestors stage 'Thanksgiving' rally after Trump signs Hong Kong Democracy act

Donald Trump signs bills backing HK protesters. Watch video to know more.

Donald Trump signs bills backing HK protesters

US President Donald Trump signs bills backing Hong Kong protesters. Watch video to know more.

WION Dispatch: Trump signs bills backing Hong Kong protesters

China summons US envoy after Trump signs Hong Kong Democracy act. Watch video to know more.

China summons US envoy after Trump signs Hong Kong Democracy act

The President of the United States Donald Trump has posted a picture of his head photoshopped on Rocky Balboa — the iconic character from Sylvester Stallone's Rocky series. Leaving twitter baffled, and the tweet viral.

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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<a href="https://t.co/11nzKwOCtU">pic.twitter.com/11nzKwOCtU</a>
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1199718185865535490?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
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The original image of this tweet is an advertisement for the 1982 film "Rocky III" starring Sylvester Stallone, who played Balboa in several films.

The tweeted photo of a hunky Trump drew instant and sustained mockery online, as well as retweets from the president's admirers, who enjoy the way he has brought showmanship into the White House.

"Now we know what they did to him at that mysterious doctor’s visit?" quipped NBC News anchor Andrea Mitchell over the faked Trump boxer. 
 
(With inputs from AFP)

The President of the United States Donald Trump has posted a picture of his head photoshopped on Rocky Balboa — the iconic character from Sylvester Stallone's Rocky series.

The President of the United States Donald Trump has posted a picture of his head photoshopped on Rocky Balboa — the iconic character from Sylvester Stallone's Rocky series. Leaving twitter baffled, and the tweet viral. pic.twitter.com/11nzKwOCtU — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2019 × The original image of this tweet is an advertisement for the 1982 film "Rocky III" starring Sylvester Stallone, who played Balboa in several films. The tweeted photo of a hunky Trump drew instant and sustained mockery online, as well as retweets from the president's admirers, who enjoy the way he has brought showmanship into the White House. "Now we know what they did to him at that mysterious doctor’s visit?" quipped NBC News anchor Andrea Mitchell over the faked Trump boxer. (With inputs from AFP)

US President Donald Trump tweets an image of himself as Rocky Balboa

US President <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/next-phase-of-trump-impeachment-hearings-set-for-december-4-264748">Donald Trump</a> said in a radio interview posted online Tuesday that he planned to designate Mexican drug cartels as terror groups.

The move comes after Trump called for a "war" on the drug cartels in early November when nine women and children from an American Mormon community in northern Mexico were killed in a hail of gunfire.

"Are you going to designate those cartels in Mexico as terror groups and start hitting them with drones?" asked Bill O'Reilly, a conservative media personality in an online interview on "The O'Reilly Update."

"I don't want to say what I'm going to do, but they will be designated," Trump answered.

He added: "I will be designating the cartels... absolutely. I have been working on that for the last 90 days.

"Designation is not that easy, you have to go through a process and we are well into that process."

Mexican authorities reacted swiftly, with the foreign ministry saying that it has contacted US officials "to understand the content and the reach" of what the US president had said.

Mexico would also seek a high-level meeting with US officials to hear US concerns and present Mexico's views,&nbsp;which include stemming the flow of weapons bought in the United States and smuggled south of the border, the statement read.

US President Donald Trump said in a radio interview posted online Tuesday that he planned to designate Mexican drug cartels as terror groups. The move comes after Trump called for a "war" on the drug cartels in early November when nine women and children from an American Mormon community in northern Mexico were killed in a hail of gunfire.

US President Donald Trump said in a radio interview posted online Tuesday that he planned to designate Mexican drug cartels as terror groups. The move comes after Trump called for a "war" on the drug cartels in early November when nine women and children from an American Mormon community in northern Mexico were killed in a hail of gunfire. "Are you going to designate those cartels in Mexico as terror groups and start hitting them with drones?" asked Bill O'Reilly, a conservative media personality in an online interview on "The O'Reilly Update." "I don't want to say what I'm going to do, but they will be designated," Trump answered. He added: "I will be designating the cartels... absolutely. I have been working on that for the last 90 days. "Designation is not that easy, you have to go through a process and we are well into that process." Mexican authorities reacted swiftly, with the foreign ministry saying that it has contacted US officials "to understand the content and the reach" of what the US president had said. Mexico would also seek a high-level meeting with US officials to hear US concerns and present Mexico's views, which include stemming the flow of weapons bought in the United States and smuggled south of the border, the statement read.

Will designate Mexican cartels as 'terror groups': Donald Trump

Trump impeachment inquiry: What happens next?

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Donald Trump visits US troops in Afghanistan on Thanksgiving

WION Speed News: Watch top national and international news of the morning - November 29th, 2019

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After Trump's surprise visit to Afghanistan, Taliban say they are ready to resume peace talks

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Trump signs Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act

WION Speed News: Watch top national and international news of the morning - November 28th, 2019

Draped in US flag, protestors stage 'Thanksgiving' rally after Trump signs Hong Kong Democracy act

Donald Trump signs bills backing HK protesters