Tag: United States of America

The Trump administration was reportedly hoping for more progress from China on market-oriented reforms after a meeting between President Trump and his Chinese counterpart. A senior administration official told Bloomberg News that the U.S. is worried about subsidies, excess capacity and industrial policy. The official told Bloomberg that the U.S. had expected more progress to be made after a meeting earlier this year between Trump and President Xi Jinping. Trump is expected to go to Beijing next month. He will also go to a meeting of leaders from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Vietnam. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson last week hit China over what he deemed as its efforts to subvert and undermine global order, while outlining a broad commitment to increasing cooperation with India. Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a foreign policy think tank, Tillerson said that the Trump administration was "determined to dramatically deepen" cooperation with India, which he cast as a stabilizing influence in Asia. China, on the other hand, poses a threat to stability in the region and the greater world order, he said. "China, while rising alongside India, has done so less responsibly, at times undermining the international, rules-based order even as countries like India operate within a framework that protects other nations’ sovereignty," Tillerson said.

"House Of Cards" was apparently a required watching as Russia tried to craft its message during the influence campaign that U.S. intelligence says Russia carried out during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Now, all this is according to an interview with a former member of a St. Petersburg troll factory's elite English language department. KELLY: Were you able to verify the story? I mean, how credible do we think that this former troll giving an interview on Russian TV is? ISIKOFF: Well, what we do know is that what he had to say is very consistent with the way U.S. intelligence officials have described the Russian influence campaign. So the messaging described by this former troll who went by the name of Maksim is very consistent with what American intelligence officials have said the Russians were doing. KELLY: Let me pull you back to the heart of this story, which is "House Of Cards." KELLY: What did the Russians learn from it? KELLY: Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News talking about his latest story headlined "Russian Trolls Were Schooled On "House Of Cards."

Since the tragic shooting in Las Vegas, liberals in Hollywood, Washington, D.C., and the news media have been demanding stricter gun-control laws. Regardless of whether you support enhancing border security at the U.S.-Mexico border, one thing is certain: In its current state, it’s relatively easy to transport illegal weapons in and out of Mexico. Although most of these weapons are believed to be brought from the United States into Mexico, if liberals were to successfully ban and destroy most guns (a task that is likely impossible at any point in the near future), the numerous organized crime groups trafficking in illicit drugs in northern Mexico would have an entirely new black market to take advantage of. Anti-gun liberals consistently argue that the primarily reason cities and states with harsh gun-control laws continue to face extreme gun-related violence is because guns are being illegally purchased by criminals who obtain weapons in states with few limits. Such a position, whether it’s true or not, when logically extended to a situation in which there are strict national gun-control laws, would require completing closing, at the very least, the U.S.-Mexico border. Otherwise, all the left would be doing is empowering foreign and domestic criminal organizations at the expense of the thousands of gun shops currently in operation throughout the country. Many Canadian officials believe most of the illegal guns in Canada entered the nation from the United States.

Washington (CNN)Yahoo correspondent Michael Isikoff said on CNN's "New Day" Monday that Russians who worked for a St. Petersburg "troll factory" were required to watch Netflix's "House of Cards" to help them write messages that would influence Americans against their own government. They were also required to post about guns and gays, while mentioning religion. They were never to mention Russia or Putin and they were instructed to use VPNs, or virtual private networks, to disguise their Russian origin. "Every comma was reviewed by (Maksim's) bosses to make sure it was in the right place so it sounded like an American posting by Americans," Isikoff told CNN's Chris Cuomo. "Primarily what he was doing was placing comments on the websites of major news organizations, The Washington Post, The New York Times and others." Maksim said he worked for the troll factory during 2015, when they were already posting negative comments about Clinton. "At first, we were forced to watch the 'House of Cards' in English," Maksim said in the interview, according to Yahoo. Tax problems, the problem of gays, sexual minorities, weapons." It's a show that has always operated on the fringes of absurdity, where murder and blackmail are among the Underwoods' tools of persuasion.

John Kasich (R) warned on Sunday that the U.S. is walking away from international alliances and guidelines that were put in place after World War II as a means of preventing authoritarianism. "One of the things I am concerned about is the drift that we are in right now in terms of America and the world," Kasich told NBC's Chuck Todd on "Meet the Press." Because if we walk away, this thing collapses. And who wins? The Russians and the Chinese. Not good for our country, and not good for freedom," he said. "There is a battle now. The Russians and the Chinese want authoritarian-type government, okay? And we're walking away from our allies on trade agreements, this Iran thing, we'll see how that turns out," he continued. Kasich's comments come after Trump dealt a blow to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal on Friday, announcing the deal was not in U.S. national security interests.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) blasted President Trump's announcement Friday that he would not certify the multination Iran nuclear deal, saying Trump's comments amounted to "a lot of bluster." Sanders argued that moving away from the Obama-era agreement would lift constraints on Iran's nuclear program and "irreparably harm America’s ability to negotiate future nonproliferation agreements." "If we are genuinely concerned with Iran’s behavior in the region, as I am, the worst possible thing we could do is undermine this nuclear deal. It would make addressing all of these other problems harder. However, the president stopped short of withdrawing the U.S. from the deal, which was established by a United Nations Security Resolution. Trump also did not request that Congress impose additional sanctions on Iran for its nuclear activities, which would have effectively removed the U.S. from the deal. The president instead asked Congress to pass new benchmarks for Iran to achieve in order to avoid nuclear-related sanctions down the road. Despite the president stopping short of withdrawing the U.S. from the deal, Sanders said Trump's announcement on Friday further isolated the U.S. from its European allies, who played an integral role in brokering the deal with Tehran.

The Associated Press has obtained a recording of what some U.S. Embassy workers heard in Havana, part of the series of unnerving incidents later deemed to be deliberate attacks. The recording, released Thursday by the AP, is the first disseminated publicly of the many taken in Cuba of sounds that led investigators initially to suspect a sonic weapon. The recordings from Havana have been sent for analysis to the U.S. Navy, which has advanced capabilities for analyzing acoustic signals, and to the intelligence services, the AP has learned. The Navy and the State Department did not respond to requests for comment on the recording. Not all Americans injured in Cuba heard sounds. Individuals who have heard the noise in Havana confirm the recordings are generally consistent with what they heard. Then there would be silence for a second, or 13 seconds, or four seconds, before the sound abruptly started again. All these peaks correspond to a different frequency," said Kausik Sarkar, an acoustics expert and engineering professor at The George Washington University who reviewed the recording with the AP. The recordings have been played for workers at the U.S. Embassy to teach them what to listen for, said several individuals with knowledge of the situation in Havana. The broad array of symptoms reported, including those not easily explained by sound waves, had led to questions of a possible microwave or radio wave device frying body tissue from afar.

It's a rule that U.S. President Donald Trump might learn the hard way if he reneges on the international nuclear deal with Iran. Trump has until Oct. 15 to decide whether to recertify the Iran deal. In February, Mattis called Iran "the single biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world." If you ask an "insider" what sort of terrorism Iran has supported lately, you'll hear about Middle Eastern activity that has nothing to do with American national security and is typically just an extension of historical squabbling between Iran and its biggest regional foes, Saudi Arabia and Israel. Actions count more than mere words, and Russia has pulled the rug out from under the U.S. in the Middle East, emerging as the primary power broker in the region by making an earnest attempt to eradicate Islamic State terrorism. Sanctions merely prevent the U.S. and European countries from collecting billions of dollars in job-creating revenues. An Iranian representative in search of military drones at this year's Paris Air Show summed it up well as he handed out business cards: "Sanctions are not a problem for us!" Here in France, the rhetoric coming from the Trump administration is producing frustration. Two years after the Iran deal, American and European multinationals have been making billions of dollars in sales deals to the Iranian market, knowing that the U.S. could soon reinstate sanctions.

Hawaii's Sen. Brian Schatz (D) called on the public to heed Sen. Bob Corker’s (R-Tenn.) comment that President Trump could lead the U.S. toward ‘World War III,’ as tensions rise between Washington and North Korea. “There’s a tendency to wonder about the politics of Corker’s interview. Ignore that, and listen to his warnings about an accidental war,” Schatz tweeted on Sunday night. He went on to outline why the public should be concerned about the possibility of a conflict with North Korea, as Trump continues to direct his increasingly antagonistic rhetoric at Pyongyang. “War on Korean Peninsula could shut down trade to and from Asia for months or years,” Schatz tweeted. “War on the Korean Peninsula would cause millions of lives to be lost,” he added.

Around 3.30am on 23 November 2013 a stray bullet shattered the window of an apartment in Indianapolis where a couple watched television while their two-month-old baby slept. There’s been another since then, in Miami, where four people were shot while attending a vigil to mourn a 30-year-old woman who was shot dead in her car last week. But the myths are also powerful. But the myths are also powerful. It would be easy to blame all of this on the NRA. It is because of the NRA that people on the no-fly list can still buy guns and there is no government funding for research into how to prevent gun deaths. When accused of abdicating America’s role on the world stage, Barack Obama (who had a “kill list”) responded like a mafia don. Americans need new gun laws.