Top News Stories for Today – Mar 1, 2019
Top News Stories for Today – Mar 1, 2019
US offers reward for Bin Laden’s son
The United States is offering a reward of up to $1m for information about one of the sons of the late al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. Hamza Bin Laden is emerging as a leader of the Islamist militant group, officials say. He is thought to be based near the Afghan-Pakistani border.
In recent years, he has released audio and video messages calling on followers to attack the US and its Western allies in revenge for his father’s killing. In 2011, US special forces killed Osama Bin Laden in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. He approved the attacks on the US on 11 September 2001, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed. BBC
Lawmakers back Trump’s Hanoi summit stance
US senators of both parties endorsed President Donald Trump’s decision to cut short a summit with North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un if no nuclear accord acceptable to the United States was on the table. “No deal is better than a bad deal,” West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin told reporters in Washington Thursday.
The second encounter between Trump and Kim, held in Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi, ended abruptly Thursday, reportedly amid an impasse over the pace and timing of sanctions relief for North Korea relative to Pyongyang’s timeline for denuclearization. VOA
2 different summit collapse versions of Trump and Kim
President Donald Trump said he walked away from his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un because Kim demanded the US lift all of its sanctions, but North Korea’s foreign minister insisted that they had only demanded partial sanctions relief. Trump said Kim was only willing to dismantle the Yongbyon nuclear facility in exchange for a full removal of sanctions, but North Korea’s foreign minister Ri Yong Ho said negotiations collapsed when the US demanded further steps toward denuclearization.
Late Thursday, a senior State Department official conceded that North Korea demanded for only some sanctions lifted, and had been asking for months in lower-level talks. The Associated Press
Pakistan to release captured Indian pilot
Crowds of Indians are gathering near a border crossing with Pakistan ahead of the release of an Indian fighter pilot captured by Pakistan. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan said the pilot would be released as a “peace gesture” on Friday. India’s military welcomed the move.
Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman’s plane was shot down in the disputed region of Kashmir on Wednesday. Both countries are under pressure to calm tensions. On Friday Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the events of the past few days had “brought our nation closer”. BBC
Trump ordered to give Kushner security clearance
President Trump ordered his chief of staff to grant his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, a top-secret security clearance last year, overruling concerns flagged by intelligence officials and the White House’s top lawyer, four people briefed on the matter said.
Trump’s decision in May so troubled senior administration officials that at least one, the White House chief of staff at the time, John F. Kelly, wrote a contemporaneous internal memo about how he had been “ordered” to give Kushner the top-secret clearance. The White House counsel at the time, Donald F. McGahn II, also wrote an internal memo outlining the concerns that had been raised about Kushner — including by the CIA — and how McGahn had recommended that he not be given a top-secret clearance. House Democrats are investigating how Trump handles security clearances. The New York Times, Washington Post
Gov. Inslee enters 2020 presidential race
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) has officially announced he is running for president in 2020. In a video on Friday, Inslee said he has launched his campaign “because I’m the only candidate who will make defeating climate change our nation’s number one priority.” Inslee also said that “we’re the first generation to feel the sting of climate change, and we’re the last that can do something about it.”
He has served as the governor of Washington since 2013 and was previously a member of the US House of Representatives. Jay Inslee, The Seattle Times via The Week
Felix Sater to testify in Congress
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff says Felix Sater will appear at a public hearing March 14 to testify about President Donald Trump’s effort to build a skyscraper in Russia. Sater, a Russia-born executive who had worked for the Trump Organization, is a figure in probes into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. He’s an associate of Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, who testified in private before Schiff’s panel Thursday.
Sater worked with Cohen on the Trump Tower deal in Moscow that was later abandoned. The Associated Press