Top Stories Today – June 20, 2019
Top Stories Today – June 20, 2019
Iran shoots down US drone
Iran shot down a US drone Thursday in an incident Iranian officials said happened over the country’s territory, but US officials say took place in international airspace. In the Iranian account, the drone was an RQ-4 Global Hawk shot down by the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in the airspace of the country’s southern Hormozgan province, near the Strait of Hormuz. A US official identified the aircraft as an MQ-4C Triton that was flying over the Strait of Hormuz.
US Central Command spokesman Navy Capt. Bill Urban told VOA, “No US aircraft were operating in Iranian airspace today.” Relations have deteriorated since US President Donald Trump withdrew last year from the international agreement that limited Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. New US sanctions have hurt Iran’s economy, and Iran has announced increased production of low-enriched uranium as it seeks help from European nations to circumvent the US measures. The Voice of America
Xi Jinping arrives N Korea
Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un have held talks at the start of the Chinese president’s trip to North Korea, rebooting a troubled alliance as the pair face their own challenges from Donald Trump. Xi’s two-day visit is the first by a Chinese leader to North Korea in 14 years, after relations between the cold war-era allies deteriorated over Pyongyang’s nuclear provocations and Beijing’s subsequent backing of UN sanctions.
China’s Xinhua news reports 10,000 people waving flowers and chanting slogans greeted Xi at Pyongyang’s airport, where he was met by Kim and his wife, Ri Sol-ju. Chinese media footage showed hundreds of people lining the streets as Xi was driven to the city Centre. The Guardian
ASEAN urged to adopt ban on plastic waste import
Environmental activists from across Southeast Asia are urging their governments to present a united front ahead of a major summit in Bangkok against a surge of plastic and electronic waste imports that are turning the regions into the world’s “dumpsite.” For decades China had been the world’s leading plastic trash importer, taking in nearly half the globe’s output — some 9 million tons — at its peak in 2012, according to Greenpeace. That quickly changed after China abruptly banned most waste imports at the end of 2017 to cut back on the heavy pollution that came with processing and recycling it.
China’s move “changed the scenario, and ASEAN has become the world’s new dumpsite,” said Shanya Attasillekha, also with Greenpeace Thailand. Thailand, this year’s chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), will host the leaders of the 10-country bloc for a four-day summit starting Thursday under the banner “Advancing Partnership for Sustainability.” But environmental rights groups see a glaring omission in their agenda. The Voice of America
Biden rejects Democratic criticism of comments
Former Vice President Joe Biden pushed back Wednesday on criticism from his 2020 Democratic presidential rivals about comments he made Tuesday night in which he touted his ability to get business done with two former senators, both hard-line segregationists, in the 1970s. “I ran for the United States Senate because I disagreed with the views of the segregationists,” he said.
Asked if he should apologize for his remarks, as Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said, Biden asked what he would apologize for, adding: “Cory should apologize. He knows better. There’s not a racist bone in my body. I’ve been involved in civil rights my whole career. Period, period, period.” Later on CNN, Booker caled Biden’s pushback “so insulting and so missing the larger point.” USA Today, Axios via The Week
FBI doing toxicology tests after 9 US died in Dominican
The FBI is assisting with the toxicology tests of three of the nine Americans who have died in the Dominican Republic in the past year, Dominican Republic’s Ministry of Health communications director Carlos Suero said Wednesday. Last week the US Embassy announced the FBI involvement in toxicology analysis and said results might take up to 30 days.
The spate of deaths has left many Americans wondering if they should cancel their upcoming trips to the Caribbean paradise. Officials in the Dominican Republic have called the deaths isolated events as they work to reassure travelers their country is safe. The family of one of the American tourists who died there in recent months wants pathologists in the United States to examine his body for a cause of death, his brother told CNN on Wednesday. CNN
Evidence ties Saudi Crown Prince to Khashoggi death
There is “credible evidence” linking Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi last October in Riyadh’s consulate in Istanbul, a U.N. rights investigator said Wednesday. Agnes Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, said in a new 101-page report after a six-month investigation that Khashoggi was “the victim of a deliberate, premeditated execution, an extrajudicial killing for which the state of Saudi Arabia is responsible under international human rights law.”
She said sanctions should be imposed on the prince’s personal foreign assets “until and unless evidence is provided and corroborated that he carries no responsibilities for this execution.” Callamard called for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to open a formal criminal investigation into the death of Khashoggi, 59, who was living in self-imposed exile in the United States. A Saudi minister rejected the report as “baseless” and questioned Callamard’s neutrality. The Voice of America