by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Washington : Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said that women are “absolutely” equal to men as he is set to arrive in the US on Monday during which he will meet President Donald Trump and tour a number of American cities.
On Sunday, CBS News programme “60 Minutes” aired an episode about the prince and where he hopes to take Saudi Arabia.
When asked if women were equal to men, the Crown Prince said: “Absolutely. We are all human beings and there is no difference.”
He acknowledged that Saudi Arabia has been dominated by an “ultraconservative interpretation of Islam” that was wary of non-Muslims, deprived women of basic rights and constricted social life, the New York Times reported.
“We were victims, especially my generation that suffered from this a great deal,” he said about conservatism that spread through the kingdom after 1979.
Bin Salman’s rise to power has been accompanied by an easing of restrictions on women’s dress and an expansion of their role in the work force. He said the government was working on policies to ensure equal pay.
The kingdom had also allowed women to drive in an order which will go into force from June.
However, women in Saudi Arabia are still bound by so-called guardianship laws that give male relatives control over aspects of their lives.
Talking about his drive against corruption, he defended the recent jailing of over 380 princes, businessmen and former government ministers in the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh as “extremely necessary.”
There were accusations of abuse by relatives and associates of the detained. They said that many detainees were subjected to “coercive tactics” and “physical abuse” to get them to sign assets over to the state.
The Saudi government, however, denied that any abuse took place.
The Crown Prince, who has been criticized for lavish personal expenses at a time when he is preaching fiscal responsibility, defended his private spending as “his business”.
In recent years, he bought a yacht for a half-billion dollars, a French chateau for over $300 million and a painting for $450 million, the New York Times reported.
“As far as my private expenses are concerned, I’m a rich person and not a poor person,” he said. “I’m not Gandhi or Mandela.”
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Robert Mueller
Washington : Special Counsel Robert Mueller, has subpoenaed the Trump Organization to turn over documents, including some related to the ongoing probe into the alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, the media reported.
The order is the first known instance of Mueller demanding records directly related to Donald Trump’s businesses, bringing the investigation closer to the President, informed sources told The New York Times late Thursday.
The breadth of the subpoena was not clear, nor was it clear why Mueller issued it instead of simply asking for the documents from the company, an umbrella organisation that encompasses Trump’s business ventures.
Mueller ordered the Trump Organization to hand over records related to Russia and other topics he is investigating, the people said.
The subpoena is the latest indication that the investigation, which Trump’s lawyers once regularly assured him would be completed by now, will continue for at least several more months, the sources told the daily.
The news of the subpoena comes as Mueller appears to be broadening his inquiry to examine the role foreign money may have played in funding Trump’s political activities.
In recent weeks, Mueller’s investigators have questioned witnesses, including an adviser to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), about the flow of Emirati money into the US, reports The New York Times.
Mueller has already indicted 13 Russians and three companies accused of meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign, and on Thursday, the Trump administration included them in sanctions it levelled at Moscow as punishment for interference in the campaign and “malicious cyberattacks”.
The Trump Organization has typically complied with requests from congressional investigators for documents for their own inquiries into Russian election interference and there was no indication the company planned to fight Mueller’s order.
Alan Futerfas, an attorney for the Trump Organization, said in a statement that Thursday’s report are “old news and our assistance and cooperation with the various investigations remains the same today”.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, reiterated during her daily briefing that the president was cooperating with the special counsel inquiry and referred further questions to the Trump Organization.
News of the subpoena broke shortly after the Trump administration announced a new raft of sanctions on Moscow, including Russian nationals previously indicted in the special counsel probe, reports CNN.
His former campaign chairman Paul Manafort faces more than 300 years in prison if he’s convicted of charges stemming from Mueller’s investigation that are unrelated to alleged Russian meddling in the election.
Meanwhile, Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee moved earlier this week to close their investigation, saying they found no “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia, as well as denying that Russian efforts to interfere in the election were done to bolster Trump, a central tenet of the US intelligence community’s conclusion about the meddling.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : Republican Senator Jeff Flake slammed President Donald Trump’s newly signed tariffs on steel and aluminium imports while introducing a bill that would nullify them completely, the media reported.
“Tariffs are bad enough on their own. Tariffs married with uncertainty are even worse,” CNBC News quoted the Arizona lawmaker as saying on the Senate floor on Monday evening.
On March 8, Trump signed two executive orders that will enact broaden tariffs of 25 per cent on steel and 10 per cent on aluminium.
The orders were signed over the objections of more than 100 congressional Republicans, who urged Trump in a letter to at least pare back the scope of the tariffs.
“I understand free trade is sometimes a challenge. I understand that it’s a challenge on the campaign trail, certainly,” Flake said.
“It’s much easier to point to a shuttered factory,” he said, “or some other convenient scapegoat”.
But Flake maintained that tariffs will make things worse, not better, for Americans and the US economy, reports CNBC News.
“You can be pro-growth or pro-tariff, but you cannot be both,” he added.
However, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn said on Monday night that there was little chance the Republican-controlled Congress will pass a legislation to block Trump’s tariffs.
He expected lawmakers who support free trade to keep lobbying the administration to add more exemptions.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : US President Donald Trump has accepted an invitation to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, an extraordinary development following months of heightened nuclear tension and frequent threats and insults, media reports said.
The news was confirmed on Thursday night by both the White House and visiting South Korean National Security Adviser Chung Eui-yong.
“President Trump greatly appreciates the nice words of the South Korean delegation and President Moon. He will accept the invitation to meet with Kim Jong-un at a place and time to be determined. We look forward to the denuclearisation of North Korea. In the meantime, all sanctions and maximum pressure must remain,” CNN quoted White House press secretary Sarah Sanders as saying.
After meeting Trump at the White House, Chung said: “He (Kim) expressed his eagerness to meet President Trump as soon as possible.
“President Trump said he would meet Kim Jong-un by May.”
Chung however, did not provide any information on where the meeting would take, reports The Washington Post.
Chung led the South Korean delegation earlier this week to North Korea, where Kim and his senior cadre expressed a willingness to hold talks with the US and were prepared to discuss denuclearisation and normalising relations.
In Seoul, the presidential Blue House clarified that the meeting would occur by the end of May.
Trump also expressed his optimism about the meeting in a post on Twitter, saying that Kim had “talked about denuclearisation with the South Korean Representatives, not just a freeze”, The New York Times reported.
“Also, no missile testing by North Korea during this period of time… Great progress being made but sanctions will remain until an agreement is reached. Meeting being planned!”
Trump and Kim have spent the past year making belligerent statements about each other, with Trump mocking Kim as “Little Rocket Man” and pledging to “totally destroy” North Korea and Kim calling the American President a “dotard” and a “lunatic” and threatening to send nuclear bombs to Washington, D.C.
No sitting American President has ever met a North Korean leader, The Washington Post reported.
Former president Jimmy Carter met Kim’s grandfather Kim Il-sung, and former president Bill Clinton met his father, Kim Jong-il – during visits to Pyongyang after they had left office.
Both Carter and Clinton also went to Pyongyang to collect Americans who had been imprisoned by the regime.
Since he took over the leadership of North Korea from his father at the end of 2011, Kim Jong-un has not met any other head of state.
Discussions were now underway to hold a summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in the demilitarised zone between the two Koreas at the end of next month.
After a year in which North Korea fired intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching all of the US and tested what is widely thought to have been a hydrogen bomb, such a moratorium would be welcomed by Washington and the world.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : US President Donald Trump reacted combatively to widespread criticism of his plan to impose tariffs on imports of steel and aluminium to protect domestic producers.
“When a country (the US) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win,” he tweeted on Friday night.
“Example, when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don’t trade anymore-we win big. It’s easy!,” he added.
The President’s announcement on Thursday that he will order tariffs of 25 per cent and 10 per cent, respectively, on imported steel and aluminium, spurred a 420-point drop on the New York Stock Exchange and expressions of alarm.
Some of the sharpest criticism of the planned tariffs came from Trump’s fellow Republicans, most of them ardent free-traders.
“Kooky 18th century protectionism will jack up prices on American families – and will prompt retaliation from other countries,” Senator Ben Sasse said in a statement.
“Make no mistake: If the President goes through with this, it will kill American jobs – that’s what every trade war ultimately does,” the Nebraska Republican said.
House Speaker Paul Ryan said that US workers and firms could suffer from “unintended consequences” if the tariffs were imposed, while European Commission chairman Jean-Claude Juncker was one of several international leaders threatening retaliation for the levies.
Roberto Azevedo, the Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), broke with his usual practice by commenting publicly on Trump’s announcement.
“The WTO is clearly concerned at the announcement of US plans for tariffs on steel and aluminium. The potential for escalation is real, as we have seen from the initial responses of others. A trade war is in no one’s interests,” Azevedo said.
Asked on Friday about the negative reception to Trump’s tariff idea, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said that the President was not concerned and that he remained “pretty committed” to moving this forward.
Paradoxically, Trump’s proposal got a much warmer response from some Democrats, such as Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, who described the tariffs as “long overdue” action to aid steelworkers in his state.
Trump also won plaudits from the country’s largest labour federation.
“For years, we have called attention to the predatory practices of some steel exporting countries,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said. “This is a great first step toward addressing trade cheating.”
The President’s decision was not unanimously popular within his own administration.
Gary D. Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council, “threatened to resign if the White House followed through with stiff and sweeping tariffs, according to people who have spoken with him in recent days”.
—IANS
