US, Taliban keep open door to talks after Donald Trump scraps summit

International News

The United States and Afghanistan's Taliban on Sunday both left the door open to fresh talks after President Donald Trump abruptly cancelled a secret summit, but the insurgents threatened to inflict greater costs.
Washington also said it would not relent in fighting the militants after Trump blamed the scuttling of the unprecedented meeting on a Taliban attack that killed a US soldier.
Trump said he had invited Taliban leaders and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani for talks Sunday at the Camp David presidential retreat on a draft deal that would see the United States withdraw thousands of troops and wind down its longest-ever war.
In a series of television interviews, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did not rule out a return to talks but said the United States needed a "significant commitment" from the Taliban.
"I'm not pessimistic," Pompeo told NBC. "I've watched the Taliban do things and say things they've not been permitted to do before." "I hope it's the case the Taliban will change their behaviour, will recommit to the things that we've been talking to them about for months," he said on ABC.
"In the end, this will be resolved through a series of conversations," he added, urging the Taliban to drop their long-running refusal to negotiate with Ghani's internationally recognized government.

 He said that Trump had not decided whether to go ahead with a withdrawal, which under the draft deal would pull 5,000 of the roughly 13,000 US troops from Afghanistan next year.But Pompeo warned that the United States was "not going to reduce the pressure" on the Taliban, saying US forces had killed more than 1,000 insurgents in the past 10 days alone...Read More

North Korea fires missiles, complicates resumption of nuclear talks with US

Current Affairs

North Korea fired two short-range missiles into the sea on Thursday, complicating efforts to resume stalled nuclear talks with Washington and signalling its anger over planned US-South Korea joint military exercises.
It was the North's first missile test since an impromptu meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un last month that produced an agreement to resume a working-level denuclearisation dialogue.
But those talks have yet to begin, and Pyongyang warned recently they could be derailed by Washington and Seoul's refusal to scrap military exercises scheduled for next month.
South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said the two missiles were launched just after dawn from Wonsan on the east coast and flew more than 430 kilometres (270 miles) before falling into the sea.
"Our military is closely monitoring the situation in case of additional launches and maintaining a readiness posture," it said.
"We urge the North to stop actions that do not help ease military tensions," said Choi Hyun-soo, a defence ministry spokeswoman for South Korea.
Japan's defence minister called the launches "extremely regrettable" but stressed that the missiles had fallen short of his country's exclusive economic zone.Pyongyang carried out similar short-range launches in May, which Trump dismissed at the time as "very standard stuff" that would have no impact on his relationship with Kim.

 The two leaders went on to hold an unscheduled meeting June 30 in the Demilitarized Zone that divides the two Koreas...Read More

Kim Jong-un's half-brother killed in Malaysia was a CIA informant: Report

Company News

Kim Jong Nam, the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un who was killed in Malaysia in 2017, had been an informant for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
The Journal cited an unnamed “person knowledgeable about the matter” for the report, and said many details of Kim Jong Nam’s relationship with the CIA remained unclear.Reuters could not independently confirm the story. The CIA declined to comment.
The Journal quoted the person as saying “There was a nexus” between the CIA and Kim Jong Nam.“Several former U.S. officials said the half brother, who had lived outside of North Korea for many years and had no known power base in Pyongyang, was unlikely to be able to provide details of the secretive country’s inner workings,” the Journal said.
The former officials also said Kim Jong Nam had been almost certainly in contact with security services of other countries, particularly China’s, the Journal said.Kim Jong Nam’s role as a CIA informant is mentioned in a new book about Kim Jong Un, “The Great Successor,” by Washington Post reporter Anna Fifield that is due to be published on Tuesday. Fifield says Kim Jong Nam usually met his handlers in Singapore and Malaysia, citing a source with knowledge of the intelligence.
The book says that security camera footage from Kim Jong Nam’s last trip to Malaysia showed him in a hotel elevator with an Asian-looking man who was reported to be a U.S. intelligence agent. It said Ki’s backpack contained $120,000 in cash, which could have been payment for intelligence-related activities, or earnings from his casino businesses.

 South Korean and U.S. officials have said the North Korean authorities had ordered the assassination of Kim Jong Nam, who had been critical of his family’s dynastic rule. Pyongyang has denied the allegation.

China to pass new foreign investment law to meet US' demand, end trade war

International News
China is all set pass a new foreign investment law to provide a level playing field to global investors with legal safeguards on IPR and technology transfer, some of the main demands of US President Donald Trump to end the trade war between the world's two largest economies.

The US and China are locked in a trade war since Trump imposed heavy tariffs on imported steel and aluminium items from China in March last year, a move that sparked fears of a global trade war. In response, China imposed tit-for-tat tariffs on billions of dollars worth of American imports.
China is the world's second largest economy after the US.

The draft foreign investment law will be submitted to the top legislature, the National People's Congress (NPC), for review on March 8 and put for vote on March 15, Zhang Yesui, spokesman of the NPC said on Monday.

Asked why China is passing the new foreign investment law in a hurry, Zhang said that the interests of China and the United States are deeply interwoven and a confrontational China-US relationship does not benefit anyone.

China has a clear policy towards its relationship with the US, which is based on no-conflict and no-confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation, he said.


 The adoption of the foreign investment law is an innovation in the legal system on foreign investment and is to replace the existing three laws and serve as the basic law on foreign investment as China continues to open up in the new era, Zhang said...Read More

South Korea war games too expensive for US: Trump on ending military drill

International News

US President Donald Trump denied that he ordered an end to major US-South Korean military exercises as a concession to North Korea's totalitarian leader Kim Jong Un.
The previously annual, large-scale manoeuvers -- meant to keep troops ready in case of conflict with North Korea -- were shelved shortly after Trump's summit last week with Kim in Hanoi.
Trump denied there was any link.
"The military drills, or war games as I call them, were never even discussed in my mtg w/ Kim Jong Un," he tweeted.
"I made that decision long ago because it costs the U.S. far too much money to have those 'games', especially since we are not reimbursed for the tremendous cost!" he said in the tweet.
There are close to 30,000 US troops stationed in South Korea, and their annual drills with tens of thousands of South Korean soldiers have angered North Korea, which claims they are rehearsals for invasion.
While Trump has ruled out withdrawing US troops, he has repeatedly complained about the cost of the exercises, describing them at a press conference in Hanoi as "very, very expensive".

 Trump's summit with Kim ended with no progress toward Washington's goal of getting the isolated country to give up its nuclear weapons...Read More