Top Stories Today – July 1, 2019
Top Stories Today – July 1, 2019
Trump crosses into N Korea and meets Kim
President Donald Trump meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the border village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone, South Korea on Sunday. After shaking hands with Kim at the Panmunjom border village, Trump walked across the military demarcation line separating the two Koreas. Kim and Trump then crossed the border back into South Korea. “Good to see you again,” Kim told Trump. “I never expected to see you in this place.” “Stepping across that line was a great honor,” said Trump, who invited Kim to the United States for another meeting.
It is the third meeting between Kim and Trump, following meetings in Singapore last June and in Vietnam in February. Though the DMZ summit raises hopes of revived nuclear talks, it’s not clear how much progress was made. In their public comments Sunday, neither Trump nor Kim gave any indication of softening their stances. Trump visited the DMZ with South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Though the three leaders did not make any public statement together, they briefly appeared together before Trump and Kim met for private talks. Trump became the first sitting US president to set foot in North Korea, accompanied by leader Kim Jong-un. The Voice of America, BBC
N Korea praises Trump for visiting DMZ
North Korea’s state-run media declared President Trump’s “historic” visit Sunday to the northern side of the DMZ an “amazing event” and the result of a “bold, brave decision” by Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. In the US, Trump becoming the first sitting US president to set foot in North Korea was greeted with extensive TV coverage, ample reality TV references, and questions about the wisdom of further legitimizing a brutally oppressive nuclear rogue state that continues to test ballistic missiles.
After their 50-minute meeting, Trump and Kim said they were restarting stalled denuclearization talks. Trump’s last-minute mini-summit capped a trip to Japan and South Korea, during which a high-profile presence of daughter Ivanka Trump raised questions and concerns. The Guardian, The Washington Post via The Week
Hong Kong protesters storm government building
Protesters in Hong Kong have damaged and breached part of the government’s Legislative Council (LegCo) building on Monday. Thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators have taken to the streets on the anniversary of the city’s handover from UK to Chinese rule. In earlier clashes, police used pepper spray and batons to contain crowds.
This is the latest in a series of protests against a controversial bill that would allow extraditions to mainland China. The government has agreed to suspend it indefinitely, but rallies continue amid calls for Chief Executive Carrie Lam to resign. The government condemned the latest violence, saying police would “take appropriate enforcement action to protect public order and safety”. BBC
10 killed in Dallas, Texas plane crash
All ten people on board a small plane were killed in a fiery crash Sunday morning when the aircraft struggled to gain altitude after taking off from a suburban Dallas airport, veered to one side and plunged into a hangar, local authorities and witnesses said. Federal officials said two crew members and eight passengers were killed when the twin-engine plane, scheduled to fly to St. Petersburg, Florida, crashed at the Addison Municipal Airport at 9:11 a.m. The identities of those killed were not immediately released.
Officials say the Beechcraft BE-350 King Air hit a hangar that then burst into flames with black smoke billowing from the building as firefighters sprayed it with water. A plane and helicopter in the hangar were damaged, but there were no people in the building. The crash left a gaping hole in the hangar, which sits not far from a busy commercial strip and densely populated residential neighborhoods of the northern suburb of Dallas. The Associated Press
Japan resumes commercial whaling
Japan resumed commercial whaling Monday after 31 years, meeting a long-cherished goal of traditionalists that’s seen as a largely lost cause due to slowing demand for the meat and changing views on conservation. Whaling boats embarked on their first commercial hunts since 1988, when Japan switched to so-called research whaling, but will stay within the country’s exclusive economic waters. Japan’s had given six-month’s notice that it was withdrawing from the International Whaling Commission, a move that went into effect Sunday.
The Fisheries Agency said the catch quota through the end of this year was set at 227 whales, fewer than the 333 Japan hunted in the Antarctic in recent years. The announcement of the quota for this season’s catch, originally planned for release in late June, was withheld until Monday in an apparent move to avoid criticism during this past weekend’s Group of 20 summit in Osaka. The Associated Press
Trump allows select US firms to supply Huawei
In a news conference Saturday that followed a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan, Trump said: “US companies can sell their equipment to Huawei. We’re talking about equipment where there’s no great national security problem with it. This represents a sharp reversal by Trump, whose administration on May 16 added the company to the “Entity List” kept by the federal Commerce Department. Inclusion on that list is viewed as a sort of death penalty for foreign firms, because it prevents US companies from doing business with them without express permission from the Commerce Department.
As of Sunday afternoon, it remained unclear exactly what sort of things US firms would be able to sell to Huawei under the administration’s new policy, and how the Commerce Department would make its determinations. The president’s decision to couple his trade war with Beijing with the Huawei ban is infuriating to many in the national security community, because it drags what they see as a pure national defense issue into the far more transactional world of trade negotiations. The Voice of America