Hillary Clinton warns about an ‘unchecked’ Trump, and China lashes out at Sweden after tourists ‘dragged out of hotel’.
Korean leaders agree to dismantle key North Korea nuclear site
North Korea’s Kim Jong-un announced Wednesday the permanent shutdown of one of its main ballistic missile testing sites after talks with South Korea President Moon Jae-in, reports BBC.
Their two-day meeting, the leaders said later, had led to new era of peace.
“South and North Korea agreed on a specific step toward denuclearisation. It is a very meaningful achievement,”Moon said.
According to Moon, Kim was willing to dismantle the key nuclear complex if the United States took unspecified “reciprocal action”.
US President Donald Trump, who praised the summit between Kim and Moon, said there had been tremendous progress with North Korea, including on its denuclearisation. He also said the agreements between the two Korean leaders were “very good news”.
“He’s calm and I’m calm, so we’ll see what happens,” Trump said referring to Kim.
Trump could do lasting damage if left unchecked in midterms, says Hillary Clinton
Former US presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who lost the 2016 election to US President Donald Trump, has expressed concern about the consequences likely if “his authoritarian tendencies” go unchecked in the November midterm elections, reports CNN.
The “authoritarian tendencies that we have seen at work in this administration with this President, left unchecked, could very well result in the erosion of our institutions to an extent that we’ve never imagined possible here”, she said on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show.
US senate may appoint man accused of sexual assault as apex court judge
Republicans in the US senate signaled Wednesday that they may move forward with confirming embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh’s appointment as associate justice of the Supreme Court, The Washington Post reported.
Kavanaugh has been accused of sexual assault during his teens by a professor named Christine Blasey Ford. He is President Trump’s nominee to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy.
While allegations against Kavanaugh are yet to be investigated, Trump’s support for the prospective apex court judge has only increased, the Post report stated.
The Facebook ‘war room’ fighting fake news for fair polls
A 25-foot-by-35-foot ‘war room’ in the heart of Facebook’s campus will serve as the headquarters for the social media giant’s bid to cut fake news and safeguard elections, The New York Times reports.
With a team of 20, the war room will focus on rooting out disinformation, monitoring false news and deleting fake accounts that may be trying to influence voters before elections in the United States, Brazil and other countries. The US is scheduled for midterm elections in November.
“We see this as probably the biggest companywide reorientation since our shift from desktops to mobile phones,” Samidh Chakrabarti, who leads Facebook’s elections and civic engagement team, told NYT.
The misuse of Facebook by suspected foreign influence campaigns has been rampant and the company is under tremendous pressure to prevent a repeat of the manipulation allegedly pulled off in Trump’s favour during the 2016 presidential campaign.
China seeks Sweden apology over ‘mistreatment of tourists’
The Chinese embassy in Sweden issued a safety alert Friday, citing an increase in the number of cases of hostility against Chinese tourists, The Global Times reported. The advisory followed a recent spurt in tensions between the nations after a Chinese family was allegedly dragged out of a Stockholm hostel for arriving before the check-in time.
China has accused Sweden of violating the tourists’ human rights and also demanded an apology from the Swedish government.
According to Sweden’s Local, the hostel’s manager told another local newspaper that they had to call police after the family issued “verbal threats” against the staff.
US-China trade war may spell damage for word economy
The trade war between China and the US, which shows no signs of letting up, may take a deep toll on the world economy, Bloomberg analyses.
Ranging from supply chains, corporate earnings and inflation, the consequences may be many. “Divorce will see a huge shift in supply chains,” Bloomberg quoted Michael Every, head of Asia financial markets research at Rabobank in Hong Kong, as saying.
According to the chief economist at the China Beige Book, Chinese corporate earnings may face a bigger bash as the rate of implementation of changes still remains unidentified. “There are more substitutes for Chinese supply than American demand. A moderate trade conflict has no winner; in a serious one, the US loses far less,” he said.
Credit Suisse’s Tao Dong told Bloomberg, “In the longer term, I suspect the trend growth in the world would moderate as trade slows down and investment slows down.”