by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : Two years after taking the oath of office, US President Donald Trump has made 8,158 false or misleading claims, according to The Washington Post’s database.
The daily’s Fact Checker’s database analyses, categorises and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the President, it said in the report on Monday.
In 2018, he made an “astonishing” 6,000-plus such claims.
The President averaged nearly 5.9 false or misleading claims a day in his first year in office, but he hit nearly 16.5 a day in his second year, almost triple the pace.
The Washington Post started the Fact Checker online project as part of its coverage of the President’s first 100 days, “largely because we could not possibly keep up with the pace and volume of the President’s misstatements”.
The project’s interactive graphic displays a running list of every false or misleading statement made by Trump. A reader can also search for specific claims or obtain monthly or daily totals.
According to Fact Checker, the President in his first 100 days made 492 unsupported claims.
He managed to top that number just in the first three weeks of 2019.
Before the midterm elections in October, he made more than 1,200 false or misleading claims.
The biggest source of misleading claims is immigration, with a tally that has grown with the addition of 300 immigration claims in the past three weeks, for a total of 1,433, the Fact Checker said.
In the President’s immigration address on January 19, the last day of his second year in office, there were 12 false or misleading claims.
According to Fact Checker, there were only 82 days or about 11 per cent of the time that there were recorded no claims.
“These were often days when the President golfed,” it added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Ivanka Trump
Washington : Ivanka Trump, US President Donald Trump’s daughter and senior adviser, will help choose the new World Bank President, the White House has said.
Jessica Ditto, a White House spokeswoman, said on Monday that Ivanka Trump was asked because “she’s worked closely with the World Bank’s leadership for the past two years”, The New York Times reported.
Ivanka Trump, who had been rumoured to be a contender for the position herself, will not be a candidate, Ditto said.
But she will assist the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, and the acting White House Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney, in choosing a successor to Jim Yong-kim, the current president of the World Bank who announced his resignation last week.
Administration officials are expected to begin the interview process for the job on Tuesday.
The White House did not provide any names of contenders.
Ivanka Trump, Mnuchin and Mulvaney will make recommendations to the President, who will nominate a candidate for the position. Member countries of the World Bank will then vote on the nominee.
Traditionally, the American President’s pick is accepted and Europe chooses the leader of the International Monetary Fund because both institutions were founded during World War II.
Jim, a former Dartmouth College president and a global health expert, was selected for the post by former President Barack Obama in 2012.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Donald Trump and Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Washington : US President Donald Trump and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed “ongoing cooperation in Syria as American forces begin to withdraw” during a phone call, just a day after Trump threatened to “devastate Turkey economically” if the NATO-allied country attacks Kurdish militia in the region.
“The President expressed the desire to work together to address Turkey’s security concerns in northeast Syria while stressing the importance to the US that Turkey does not mistreat the Kurds and other Syrian Democratic Forces with whom we have fought to defeat the IS (Islamic State),” CNN quoted White House press secretary Sarah Sanders as saying on Monday night about the call that took place earlier in the day.
Sanders said that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Joseph Dunford will meet his Turkish counterpart on Tuesday “to continue consultations” on Syria.
“Gen. Dunford is scheduled to meet his Turkish counterpart this week on the sidelines of the NATO Military Committee in Chiefs of Defence Session, which will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday at the NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium,” Col. Patrick Ryder, a spokesperson for Dunford told CNN.
On Monday night, Trump confirmed the phone call in a tweet.
“Spoke with President Erdogan of Turkey to advise where we stand on all matters including our last two weeks of success in fighting the remnants of IS, and 20 mile safe zone. Also spoke about economic development between the US and Turkey – great potential to substantially expand,” he wrote.
During the call, Erdogan told Trump that Turkey backs the President’s withdrawal decision and extends all kinds of support to the US, according to Turkish news agency Anadolu.
Anadolu said Erdogan emphatically told Trump that Turkey does not have any problems with the Kurds and that “Turkey aims to fight all terror organisations including IS, PKK (The Kurdistan Workers Party) and its cross-border extensions that are threat to its national security”.
The two leaders agreed on developing bilateral economic relations to a higher level, according to the report, CNN reported.
Monday’s call between Trump and Erdogan comes a day after the US President issued a stark threat toward Turkey, saying that Washington “will devastate Turkey economically if they hit Kurds”.
Turkey views some Kurdish groups in the region as terrorist groups and Kurds make up the majority of US-allied fighters operating in Syria in the civil war against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu responded directly to Trump’s comments on Monday prior to the phone call.
“As for Donald Trump’s threat language, we have repeatedly said that we will not be afraid of any threat… You cannot have any result from threatening Turkey economically. We need to see how we can solve this problem together.”
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
By Arul Louis,
United Nations : World Bank President Jim Yong Kim has announced that he is stepping down as the head of the premier anti-poverty institution putting the likely choice of its future leadership in the hands of US President Donald Trump, a sceptic of international development.
Trump’s role is expected reinvigorate challenges to Washington’s monopoly on appointing the Bank’s head.
Announcing his decision on Monday, Kim said in a tweet: “It’s been the greatest privilege I could have ever imagined to lead the dedicated staff of this great institution to bring us closer to a world that is finally free of poverty.”
Kim, 59, who is dropping out 19 months into his second term on February 1, would be joining a private company and focus on infrastructure investments in developing countries, the Bank said.
The Bank’s CEO Kristalina Georgieva will become the interim president till a successor to Kim is appointed.
As the largest share-holder, the US by tradition appoints the head of the Bank, while Europeans determine the chief of the International Monetary Fund.
Kim was nominated for the job by former President Barack Obama in 2012.
Before Trump’s election, Kim was hastily re-appointed in September 2016 to a second term that began in July 2017 with an eye on pre-empting a possible Trump nominee getting the job.
Now, however, Trump will get an opportunity to nominate the Bank’s head.
Trump’s role will resurrect and strengthen challenges to the post-World War II model of the leadership of the 189-member bank that has always been determined by the US .
Already the US nominee was challenged for the first time in 2012 by two contenders.
Colombian economist Jose Antonio Ocampo Gaviria eventually withdrew from the race, while Nigeria’s then-Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala lost when the Bank’s directors rubber-stamped Kim’s appointment.
Now there will be robust demands for reconsidering the US leadership of the Bank and stronger non-American contenders for the job.
Kim, a South Korea-born US citizen, was an unusual leader for the Bank: He was a medical doctor by training, a specialist in public health and an academic with a Harvard doctorate in anthropology who had led the Ivy League Dartmouth College.
But his background in health was a plus for the Bank’s mission of fighting poverty and promoting development.
Under his leadership, the Bank adopted in tandem with the UN the goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 and focusing on the bottom 40 per cent of the population in the developing world.
The Bank’s International Development Association, which funds programmes in the least developed countries, achieved two record replenishments during his tenure, the last one in 2016 for $75 billion.
Last April, the Bank also increased its capital by $13 billion with the unexpected support of the Trump administration.
Kim also pushed the Bank’s cooperation with the private sector for financing development in the developing world, particularly in the areas of climate change and infrastructure.
China, though a part of the World Bank, has thrown a challenge to it by setting up its own development banking institutions.
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), founded in 2016 is one of those institutions and several countries including India, Germany, Britain and South Korea have joined it.
(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in and followed on Twitter @arulouis)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News
New Delhi : Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump have agreed to further boost New Delhi-Washington bilateral ties while taking a positive note on cooperation across various sectors, the External Affairs Ministry said on Tuesday.
According to a Ministry statement, the two leaders exchanged New Year greetings in a telephonic conversation on Monday evening.
“They expressed satisfaction at the progress in India-US strategic partnership in 2018,” the statement said.
“They appreciated developments such as the launch of the new 2+2 Dialogue mechanism and the first-ever trilateral summit of India, the US and Japan.”
Modi, Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met on the idelines of the G20 Summit in Buenos Aires last November.
The three countries along with Australia, are part of a quad that was revived in 2017 seeking to work for peace and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region.
The Ministry statement said that Modi and Trump also “took positive note of growing bilateral cooperation in defence, counter-terrorism and energy and coordination on regional and global issues”.
“They agreed to continue to work together for further strengthening India-US bilateral relations in 2019.”
—IANS
