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Tag: Donald Trump

  • U.S ‘to withdraw’ from Paris climate pact

    U.S ‘to withdraw’ from Paris climate pact

    President Donald Trump will announce shortly that United States is withdrawing from the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

    The move will follow United Nations procedures and take up to four years, U.S said.

    Mr. Trump said during last year’s presidential election campaign that he would take the step to help his country’s oil and coal industries.

    Opponents said withdrawing from the accord is an abdication of U.S leadership on a key global challenge, the BBC reports.

    Earlier, UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, again appealed to Mr. Trump not to break the commitment – but said the battle against climate change would continue regardless of the U.S stance.

    Mr. Guterres told the BBC: “It is obviously a very important decision as the United States is the biggest economy in the world.

    “But independently of the decision of the American government, it’s important that all other governments stay the course.

    “The Paris agreement is essential for our collective future and it’s also important that American society – like all other societies, the business community – mobilise themselves in order to preserve the Paris agreement as a central piece to guarantee the future of our children and grandchildren.”

     

  • CNN fires comedian over Trumps ‘severed head’

    CNN fires comedian over Trumps ‘severed head’

    CNN has fired comedian Kathy Griffin from its annual New Year’s Eve broadcast.

    Griffin drew strong criticism for posing in photographs holding up the likeness of a severed head resembling U.S. President Donald Trump.

    Griffin, 56, a two-time Emmy-winning performer known for her deliberately provocative brand of humor, has appeared since 2007 as co-host of CNN’s New Year’s Eve broadcast from Times Square in New York with anchor Anderson Cooper.

    The network announced the termination on Wednesday after earlier criticising the photos as “disgusting and offensive.”

    Griffin posted a videotaped apology on Tuesday night amid a public outcry from Republicans and Democrats alike over the images, including condemnation from Trump.

    “Kathy Griffin should be ashamed of herself,” Trump wrote. “My children, especially my 11-year-old son, Barron, are having a hard time with this. Sick!”

    The U.S. Secret Service, responsible for presidential security, has opened an inquiry into the posting of Griffin posing with the severed-head replica, a spokesman in Los Angeles said.

    When asked whether the agency was looking into the incident as a potential threat on the president’s life.

    “We’re aware of it and we’re investigating it,” the spokesman, George Fernandez, told Reuters.

    He declined to elaborate.

    Meanwhile, Griffin, has apologised profusely in a video message posted to her official Twitter account late on Tuesday.

    She said that as a comic she routinely seeks to “cross the line” but realized in this case, “I went too far.”

  • Snowden says democracy under threat from attacks by politicians like Trump

    Snowden says democracy under threat from attacks by politicians like Trump

    Democracy and political legitimacy are increasingly under threat from attacks by politicians like U.S. President Donald Trump on “fake news” and free speech, former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden told a conference.

    “The costs of autocracy is illegitimacy, and though none of us have wished for this, it is increasingly near,” Snowden told the Estoril Conferences, a meeting held in Portugal on human rights and migration.

    Snowden was speaking through video link from Moscow, where he has been in asylum since 2013 after he revealed secret details of surveillance programs by U.S. intelligence agencies.

    Many civil rights activists see him as a hero, but at home in the U.S. he is wanted to stand trial for espionage.

    He said the world stood at the “crossroads of history”, warning that the direction it is heading now is “paved with fear, therein lies the world of walls, literal and figurative.”

    He said surveillance programmes by governments of their citizens, “the denunciation of inconvenient journalism as fake news and the prosecution of those who are speaking facts,” represents a world of fear and political illegitimacy.

    “A government willing to trade public awareness for political comfort may rule, but they do not lead,” he said.

    Snowden criticised the idea that militants represent the biggest threat to western countries, saying the loss of rights was a bigger concern.

    Elevating criminals like this is the laziest kind of rhetoric, terrorists for all their evil, are incapable of destroying our rights, or diminishing our societies.

    They lack the strength (to destroy rights), only we can do that, through unthinking, reflexive fear,” he said.

    “Rights are lost by cowardly laws that are passed in moments of panic, rights are lost to the cringing complicity of leaders who fear the loss of their office more than the loss of our liberty.”

  • Metro police arrests man with guns at Trump’s Washington hotel

    Metro police arrests man with guns at Trump’s Washington hotel

    Authorities say a Pennsylvania man was arrested at President Donald Trump’s Washington hotel early on Wednesday after police found an assault rifle, a handgun and 90 rounds of ammunition in his car.

    The Metropolitan Police Department said in a charging document that Brian Moles, 43, of Edinboro, was taken into custody inside the Trump International Hotel a few blocks from the White House.

    The Washington Post quoted police spokesman Dustin Sternbeck as saying that police had gotten a tip from an out-of-state law enforcement agency that said Moles “had made threatening remarks.” Sternbeck would not characterise the comments.

    Police had been told Moles had a Glock 23 pistol and a Carbon 15 Bushmaster rifle, the incident report said. Officers saw one of the guns in his car and found a second firearm in the glove compartment.

    Moles also had 30 rounds of 7.62mm ammunition and 60 .223-caliber rounds, the report said.

    He was charged with carrying a pistol without a licence and possessing unregistered ammunition, the document said.

    Police spokeswoman Karimah Bilal had no information about an attorney for Moles.

    Trump’s hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, housed in a landmark former post office, has become a focal point for protests against the Republican president since he took office in January.

    Edinboro Police Chief Jeff Craft said by telephone that Moles had no criminal record in the western Pennsylvania town and was not known to police.

  • Trump victim of social media ridicule after gibberish tweet

    Trump victim of social media ridicule after gibberish tweet

    Social media was trying to make sense of Donald Trump early Wednesday, after a nonsensical late-night tweet set off a storm of jokes about the U.S. president.

    The Twitter post, sent shortly before midnight local time, reads “inspite the negative press covfefe,” in an apparent reference to the press coverage that Trump has often derided as “fake news.”

    The post was still available more than three hours after it appeared on his feed and no clarification has been given.

    Using the hashtag “covfefe,” Twitter users speculated over the reasons behind the tweet. Was the president tired? Or drunk? Or had he perhaps just given away a secret nuclear code?

    Taking aim at Trump’s controversial relations with Russia, one woman on Twitter quipped that she had translated #covfefe into Russian, attaching a doctored image that showed the gibberish word to be a translation of “I resign.”

    Before long, the word had its own Urban Dictionary definition: “When you want to say ‘coverage’ but your hands are too small to hit all the letters on your keyboard.”

  • Trump victim of social media ridicule after gibberish tweet

    Trump victim of social media ridicule after gibberish tweet

    Social media was trying to make sense of Donald Trump early Wednesday, after a nonsensical late-night tweet set off a storm of jokes about the U.S. president.

    The Twitter post, sent shortly before midnight local time, reads “inspite the negative press covfefe,” in an apparent reference to the press coverage that Trump has often derided as “fake news.”

    The post was still available more than three hours after it appeared on his feed and no clarification has been given.

    Using the hashtag “covfefe,” Twitter users speculated over the reasons behind the tweet. Was the president tired? Or drunk? Or had he perhaps just given away a secret nuclear code?

    Taking aim at Trump’s controversial relations with Russia, one woman on Twitter quipped that she had translated #covfefe into Russian, attaching a doctored image that showed the gibberish word to be a translation of “I resign.”

    Before long, the word had its own Urban Dictionary definition: “When you want to say ‘coverage’ but your hands are too small to hit all the letters on your keyboard.”

  • Trump’s communications director to step aside

    Trump’s communications director to step aside

    An expected reshuffling of U.S. President Donald Trump’s staff may be underway, with communications Director Mike Dubke reportedly on his way out of the White House.

    In an email sent on Tuesday to co-workers and obtained by the Washington Post, Dubke said

    “It has been my great honour to serve President Trump and this administration.”

    The change comes after Trump returned home at the weekend from meetings in the Middle East and summits in Europe, under a cloud from the widening federal probe of his campaign’s ties to Russian officials.

    Trump fired FBI Director, James Comey on May 9.

    Reports since that the president may have sought to halt the investigation were followed by the Justice Department’s appointment of a special prosecutor to independently lead the probe of 2016 presidential campaigns and alleged Russian efforts to meddle in the election.

    Dubke, unlike most of Trump’s inner circle, had not worked in the New York billionaire’s presidential campaign.

    Dubke started in February as Trump’s second communications director.

    His predecessor in the post, Jason Miller, served in the presidential transition team but quit before the January 20 inauguration.

    Dubke had worked mostly behind the scenes. Sean Spicer remains as White House spokesman.

  • Trump’s communication director Dubke resigns

    Trump’s communication director Dubke resigns

    The Communication Director to U.S. President Donald Trump, Mike Dubke, has resigned.

    Dubke, a communications firm owner who was brought into the Trump administration in March, has not set the last day on the job but is leaving on good terms, according to Axios News, which first reported his departure and cited a senior administration official.

    Dubke reportedly put in his resignation on May 18 and the president accepted it immediately. Dubke, who served the capacity of communications director for three months, had offered to stay on through Trump’s first trip abroad, an offer the president accepted.

    Dubke “has expressed his desire to leave the White House and made very clear that he would see through the president’s international trip,” White House adviser Kellyanne Conway later told Fox News. Trump’s first overseas trip to the Middle East and Europe that ended on Saturday.

    The Washington Post said that Dubke’s last day on the job has not been determined yet, but cited an unnamed official as saying that it could be Tuesday when he was scheduled to meet with his staff.

    Dubke has been working closely with White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer. Trump’s team handling of the press has come under fire during recent scandals.

  • Trump team lack positive shifts- Russia

    Trump team lack positive shifts- Russia

    Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov on Tuesday said that Moscow was concerned that contacts with the Donald Trump administration had not yet led to positive shifts in the relations between the two nations.

    Russian news agencies quoted Ryabkov as saying that as nuclear powers Russia and the United States cannot afford to keep their relations at such a low level.

    NAN reports that tensions between the two countries have soared over the conflict in Syria, with Russian President Vladimir Putin backing Syria’s government and the U.S. opposing it.

    On April 12, Trump also said that relations with Russia “may be at an all-time low” following Syria’s use of chemical weapons on April 4, and the U.S. airstrike that followed.

    Stopping just short of accusing Russia of complicity with the sarin gas attack against civilians April 4, Trump said it’s “certainly possible” that Russia had advance knowledge of the use of chemical weapons by its ally.

    “I like to think they didn’t know. But they could have. They were there,” he said.

    Trump said he had no regrets about the decision to launch 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian air base two days later, saying Syrian leader Bashar Assad left him no choice by gassing innocent children.

     

  • G7 leaders brace for clash with Trump on trade, climate

    G7 leaders brace for clash with Trump on trade, climate

    Leaders of the world’s rich nations braced for contentious talks with Donald Trump at a G7 summit in Sicily on Friday after the U.S. president lambasted NATO allies for not spending more on defense and accused Germany of “very bad” trade policies.

    Trump’s confrontational remarks in Brussels, on the eve of the two-day summit in the Mediterranean resort town of Taormina, cast a pall over a meeting at which America’s partners had hoped to coax him into softening his stances on trade and climate change.

    The summit will kick off with a ceremony at an ancient Greek theater perched on a cliff overlooking the sea, before the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.S. begin talks on terrorism, Syria, North Korea and the global economy.

    “We will have a very robust discussion on trade and we will be talking about what free and open means,” White House economic adviser Gary Cohn told reporters late Thursday.

    He also predicted “fairly robust” talks on whether Trump should honor a U.S. commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions under the 2015 Paris Agreement.

    Trump, who dismissed man-made global warming a “hoax” during his election campaign, is not expected to decide at the summit whether he will stick with the Paris deal, negotiated under his predecessor Barack Obama.

    Even if a decision is not forthcoming, European leaders have signaled that they will push Trump hard on the Paris emissions deal, which has comprehensive support across the continent.

    “This is the first real opportunity that the international community has to force the American administration to begin to show its hand, particularly on environment policy,” said Tristen Naylor, a lecturer on development at the University of Oxford and deputy director of the G20 Research Group.

    The summit, being held near Europe’s most active volcano, Mount Etna, is the final leg of a nine-day tour for Trump, his first foreign trip since becoming president, that started in the Middle East.

    On Thursday in Brussels, with NATO leaders standing alongside him, he accused members of the military alliance of owing “massive amounts of money” to the U.S. and NATO, even though allied contributions are voluntary.

    According to German media reports, he also condemned Germany for “very bad” trade policies in meetings with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Council President Donald Tusk, signaling that he would take steps to limit the sales of German cars in the U.S.

    EU officials declined to confirm the reports.

    Trump will not be the only G7 newcomer.

    French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni and British Prime Minister Theresa May will also be attending the elite club for the first time.

    May is expected to leave a day early, following Monday’s suicide bombing at a concert in northern England that killed 22 people and was allegedly carried out by a young Islamist militant of Libyan descent who grew up in Britain.

    Italy chose to stage the summit in Sicily to draw attention to Africa, which is 225 km from the island at its closest point across the Mediterranean.

    No fewer than half a million migrants, most from sub-Saharan Africa, have reached Italy by boat since 2014, taking advantage of the chaos in Libya to launch their perilous crossings.

    Italy is eager for wealthy nations to do much more to help develop Africa’s economy and make it more appealing for youngsters to stay in their home countries.

    The leaders of Tunisia, Ethiopia, Niger, Nigeria and Kenya will join the discussions on Saturday to say what should be done to encourage investment and innovation on their continent.

    One country that won’t be present is Russia.

    It was expelled from the group in 2014 following its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

    Trump called for improved ties with Moscow during his election campaign.

    Accusations from U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia intervened in the U.S. election to help Trump, and investigations into his campaign’s contacts with Russian officials, have hung over his four-month-old presidency and prevented him from getting too close to Moscow.

    On Thursday, the Washington Post and NBC News reported that Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner was under scrutiny by the FBI because of his meetings with Russian officials before Trump took office.