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studentofrhetoric-blog · 8 years ago

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Saturday, April 22nd, 2017

International News:

--- "Britain's Theresa May appeared on course to win a crushing election victory in June after opinion polls put support for her ruling Conservative party at around 50 percent, double that of the opposition Labour party. May's decision to call a June 8 election stunned her political rivals this week and a string of polls released late on Saturday suggested the gamble had paid off, with one from ComRes showing the party of Margaret Thatcher enjoying levels of support not seen since 1991. May, appointed prime minister in the turmoil that followed Britain's vote to leave the European Union last June, said she needed the election to secure her own mandate and strengthen her hand for the Brexit negotiations ahead. She is also looking to capitalize on the disarray swirling around the Labour party, which has been riven with internal division over its leader Jeremy Corbyn. Voters also appear to be switching from the anti-EU UKIP party, which helped campaign for Brexit, to May's Conservatives, which will likely deliver it. "The announcement of a snap election has clearly focused the minds of the electorate," said James Crouch at pollster Opinium. In two other polls, May's Conservatives also gained ground in Scotland at the expense of the Scottish National Party, potentially weakening the nationalists' demand for another independence referendum."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-polls-idUSKBN17O0PT?il=0

--- "Voting began in France on Sunday in the first round of a bitterly fought presidential election that is crucial to the future of Europe and a closely-watched test of voters' anger with the political establishment. Nearly 47 million voters will decide, under tight security, whether to back a pro-EU centrist newcomer, a scandal-ridden veteran conservative who wants to slash public spending, a far-left eurosceptic admirer of Fidel Castro or appoint France's first woman president who would shut borders and ditch the euro. The outcome will be anxiously monitored around the world as a sign of whether the populist tide that saw Britain vote to leave the EU and Donald Trump's election in the United States is still rising, or starting to ebb."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-election-idUSKBN17O0DG?il=0

--- "Saudi Arabia's King Salman issued a royal decree on Saturday restoring financial allowances for civil servants and military personnel that had been cut under austerity measures. "The royal order returns all allowances, financial benefits, and bonuses to civil servants and military staff," said the decree, broadcast on state-run Ekhbariya TV. In September Saudi Arabia cut ministers' salaries by 20 percent and scaled back financial perks for public sector employees in one of the energy-rich kingdom's most drastic measures to save money at a time of low oil prices. The measures were the first pay cuts for government employees, who make up about two-thirds of working Saudis. The decree canceled those orders, saying they had come as a response to the sharp drop in the price of oil, the main source of state revenues. Oil prices sank to a low of around $28 last January amid a two-year price slump. Since late 2016, however, prices have partially rebounded, with Brent crude LCOc1 now trading around $52 a barrel compared to last year's average of $45. Minister Of State Mohammed Alsheikh said Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who serves as chairman of the Council for Economic and Development affairs, recommended the reinstatement of allowances after an official review and better-than-expected budgetary performance in the first quarter of 2017."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-economy-idUSKBN17O0NL?il=0

--- "Saudi Arabia's deputy economy minister said on Saturday the kingdom had reduced its deficit in the first quarter of 2017 by more than half in part because of prudent public spending. "The fact that the first quarter deficit was 26 billion riyals ($6.93 billion) when 54 billion riyals was projected at the beginning of the year. This is a very excellent step toward rationalized spending," Mohammed al-Tuwaijri, deputy minister of economy and planning told state-run Ekhbariya TV. Saudi's deficit shrank to 297 billion riyals ($79 billion) in 2016, down from a record 367 billion-riyal gap in 2015. In its 2017 budget plan, Riyadh said the deficit would shrink further this year to 198 billion riyals because of higher oil prices and non-oil revenues."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-economy-deficit-idUSKBN17O0P1?il=0

--- "Members of the International Monetary Fund are aligned on the need to achieve free and fair trade, Agustin Carstens, chairman of the IMF's steering committee, said on Saturday. "What we try to do in these meetings is to strike a positive constructive balance. The use of the word protectionism is very ambiguous," Carstens told a news conference, when asked why the International Monetary and Financial Committee's statement removed a past pledge to resist all forms of protectionism. "What we try to do is to basically focus on what we can achieve and what our final goal is. The final goal is to take advantage of trade ... Everyone is aligned that we need free and fair trade," said Carstens, who is also the head of Mexico's central bank."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-imf-g20-imfc-carstens-idUSKBN17O0KW?il=0

--- "International Monetary Fund members on Saturday dropped a pledge to fight protectionism amid a split over trade policy and turned their attention to another looming threat to global economic integration: the first round of France's presidential election. Concerns that far-right leader Marine Le Pen and far-left rival Jean-Luc Mélenchon, both critics of the European Union, could top the field in Sunday's vote added to nervousness over U.S. trade policy at the IMF and World Bank spring meetings. "There was a clear recognition in the room that we have probably moved from high financial and economic risks to more geopolitical risks," IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde told a news conference. Lagarde, a former French finance minister who has warned that a Le Pen presidency could lead to political and economic upheaval, added that a policy shift from "growth momentum to more sharing and inclusive growth" was now needed. A communique from the IMF's steering committee on Saturday dropped an anti-protectionism pledge, adopting language from the Group of 20 nations that the Trump administration sought last month in Germany as it develops a strategy to slash U.S. trade deficits."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-imf-g-idUSKBN17O0OD?il=0

--- "Two senior German conservative politicians have called for the European Union to end discussions with Turkey about EU membership after a vote that handed new powers to Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan. Norbert Roettgen, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and head of the foreign affairs committee, said failing to issue consequences after the referendum vote would hurt Europe. "We would damage the credibility of Europe if we failed to respond to Turkey's decision against democracy, against the rule of law ... if we continue to hold fast to the fiction of accession for a country with such a government and such a constitution," Roettgen told broadcaster Deutschlandfunk in an interview to air on Sunday. He said pretending that Turkey could join the EU would also prevent Europe from forging a new, more realistic relationship with Turkey. Turks voted a week ago by a narrow margin to abolish the post of prime minister and concentrate power in the hands of the president, the biggest overhaul of Turkey's political system since the modern state was established nearly a century ago.The results have been challenged in court by Turkey's main opposition party, and independent election monitors from the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe have questioned the vote."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-politics-germany-idUSKBN17O0ON?il=0

--- "The anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) looks set to turn further right after its co-leader, who has struck a more moderate tone of late, suffered a defeat when delegates refused to discuss her motion to shift the party into the "mainstream". Support for the party, which attacks Chancellor Angela Merkel for having allowed more than a million migrants into Germany in the last two years, has tumbled in recent months after reaching the mid-teens in opinion polls last year. Originally founded as an anti-euro party in 2013, the AfD is expected to enter the national parliament for the first time after September's election but is treated as a pariah by established political parties, which refuse to work with it. Its congress drew thousands of protesters to Cologne on Saturday."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-election-afd-idUSKBN17O0HR?il=0

--- "Pope Francis urged governments on Saturday to get migrants and refugees out of holding centers, saying many had become "concentration camps". During a visit to a Rome basilica, where he met migrants, Francis told of his trip to a camp on the Greek island of Lesbos last year. He met a Muslim refugee from the Middle East there who told him how "terrorists came to our country". Islamists had slit the throat of the man's Christian wife because she refused to throw her crucifix on the ground. "I don't know if he managed to leave that concentration camp, because refugee camps, many of them, are of concentration (type) because of the great number of people left there inside them," the pope said. The American Jewish Committee (AJC) later urged the pope "to reconsider his regrettable choice of words" for using the term concentration camp."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-pope-martyrs-idUSKBN17O0MI?il=0

--- "President Ashraf Ghani declared a national day of mourning after scores of soldiers were killed by Taliban fighters disguised as fellow soldiers, in the deadliest attack of its kind on an Afghan military base. The defense ministry has said more than 100 died or were injured in the Friday attack in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, but no exact numbers have been released. One official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters at least 140 soldiers were killed and many others wounded. Other officials said the toll was likely to be even higher. The attack starkly highlighted the difficulty of the long struggle by the Afghan government and its international backers to defeat the Taliban insurgency. After arriving in Mazar-i-Sharif to visit the base on Saturday, Ghani ordered that flags be flown at half mast on Sunday in memory of the troops who died. Ghani held an emergency meeting with senior security officials and called for a "serious" investigation into the attack."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-attack-idUSKBN17O04C?il=0

--- "A knife-wielding man threatened police at Gare du Nord train station in Paris on Saturday, causing panic before he was arrested, a spokesman for French rail operator SNCF said. The incident occurred a day before France holds the first round of its presidential election. The country is on alert following the killing of a policeman by an Islamist militant on Thursday. The SNCF spokesman said the man had approached gendarmes patrolling the train station. He was told to lie down and followed the orders before he was arrested. The scene led panic among passengers who tried to flee the scene, a witness told Reuters, adding that trains have been delayed."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-security-idUSKBN17O0FI?il=0

Domestic & International News:

--- "U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said on Saturday the United States would honor a controversial refugee deal with Australia, under which the United States would resettle up to 1,250 asylum seekers, a deal President Donald Trump had described as "dumb". Pence told a joint news conference with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull that the deal would be subject to vetting, and that honoring it "doesn't mean that we admire the agreement". "We will honor this agreement out of respect to this enormously important alliance," Pence said at Turnbull's harbor side official residence in Sydney. Australia is one of Washington's staunchest allies and has sent troops to fight alongside the U.S. military in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.Under the deal, agreed with former President Barack Obama late last year, the United States would resettle up to 1,250 asylum seekers held in offshore processing camps on South Pacific islands in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Nauru. In return, Australia would resettle refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The White House has already said it would apply "extreme vetting" to those asylum seekers held in the Australian processing centers seeking resettlement in the United States...Pence was speaking on the final leg of a 10-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region that included meetings with political and business leaders in South Korea, Japan and Indonesia. His trip to Australia is the first by a senior official in the Trump administration as the United States looks to strengthen economic ties and security cooperation amid disputes in the South China Sea and tension on the Korean peninsula."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-pence-asia-australia-idUSKBN17O02Y?il=0

Domestic News:

--- "President Donald Trump's promised "big announcement" next week on overhauling the U.S. tax code, a top campaign pledge, will consist of "broad principles and priorities," an administration official said on Saturday. The president unexpectedly said on Friday at a Treasury Department event that there would be "a big announcement on Wednesday having to do with tax reform. In a Twitter message on Saturday, he wrote: "Big TAX REFORM AND TAX REDUCTION will be announced next Wednesday." Asked for details, the administration official, who asked not to be identified, said, "We will outline our broad principles and priorities" on Wednesday...Under U.S. law, only Congress can make significant tax law changes, though the president often drives the tax agenda by offering legislation. The administration official said, "We are moving forward on comprehensive tax reform that cuts tax rates for individuals, simplifies our overly complicated system and creates jobs by making American businesses competitive." As a candidate, Trump raised high expectations in financial markets and the business community for changes in the complex, loophole-riddled tax system. In his "Contract with the American Voter," he vowed to work with Congress on tax legislation "within the first 100 days of my administration." The action plan promised large tax cuts for the middle class and businesses, a reduction of tax brackets to three from seven, simplified tax forms and an offshore profits repatriation tax holiday. Since then, no legislation or formal tax plan has been presented by Trump. He has at times expressed support for a plan drawn up by House of Representatives Republicans, but his views are unclear on a section that deals with taxing imports"

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-tax-trump-idUSKBN17O0KY?il=0

--- "U.S.Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Saturday that the Trump administration's tax reform plan would produce some "short term issues" when viewed under traditional "static" budget analysis rules. His comments during an interview by International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde suggested that the plan would not be revenue-neutral and would increase deficits in the short term. Mnuchin said that the tax plan would pay for itself when viewed through a "dynamic scoring" analysis, which accounts for the increased tax revenues that would be produced by higher growth prompted by the tax changes. "We're looking for reforms that will pay for themselves with growth," Mnuchin said. "Under dynamic scoring, this will pay for itself, under static scoring, there'll be short term issues." Mnuchin also said the tax plan would be aimed at helping the middle class to "get more money in their pockets" and would be much simpler. "The tax code is way, way, way too complicated. We want to create a system where the average American can file a tax code on a big postcard," Mnuchin said."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-imf-g20-usa-treasury-idUSKBN17O0OJ?il=0

--- "President Donald Trump visited wounded U.S. service members at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Saturday, his first visit as president to the armed forces hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, outside Washington. Accompanied by his wife, Melania, Trump awarded Army Sergeant First Class Alvaro Barrientos the Purple Heart, the medal given to members of the U.S. military wounded or killed in battle. Barrientos was injured in Afghanistan on March 17 when an Afghan soldier opened fire inside a base in Helmand province, wounding three U.S. soldiers. Barrientos's right leg was amputated, according to a White House official."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-veterans-idUSKBN17O0IP?il=0

--- "Tens of thousands of people turned out in cities across the United States and beyond on Saturday for Earth Day events billed as a "celebration of science" to counter what organizers say is a growing disregard for evidence-based knowledge in Washington. In hundreds of "March for Science" events from Boston to Sydney, Australia, engineers, researchers and teachers took a break from the lab to apply their ingenuity to colorful protest placards. Demonstrators carried signs like "There Is No Planet B," "No One Is Above Peer Review," "Revenge of the Nerds" and "Make Science Great Again," a play on U.S. President Donald Trump's campaign promise to "Make America Great Again." Other signs featured mathematical formulas in a display of geek humor. While the events were non-partisan according to organizers, many marchers were in effect protesting Trump's proposal to sharply cut federal science and research budgets and his administration's skepticism about climate change and the need to slow global warming. The marches put a new twist on the traditional Earth Day activities, the aim of which was to reaffirm "the vital role science plays in our democracy," according to the march's website. Festivities at one of the largest events on Washington's National Mall included scientific "teach-ins" and musical performances. "It's important to show this administration that we care about facts," said Chris Taylor, 24, who was part of an early crowd of about 15,000 who gathered on Washington's Mall for teach-ins on topics like climate change, water quality and sustainable food."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-earth-day-usa-march-idUSKBN17O09F

#international affairs #domestic affairs #source: reuters

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