Bhinneka News Online: Wednesday Morning Briefing: Donald Trump meets Kim Jong Un in Vietnam for second summit

Wednesday, 27 February 2019

Wednesday Morning Briefing: Donald Trump meets Kim Jong Un in Vietnam for second summit

Trump-Kim Summit

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump met in Hanoi for their second summit, with the U.S. president saying he was not walking back on U.S. demands for North Korea’s denuclearization. Kim and Trump shook hands and smiled briefly in front of a row of their countries’ flags at the Metropole hotel in the Vietnamese capital. Kim Jong Un said they had overcome obstacles to hold the summit in Vietnam and had needed patience since their first meeting in Singapore last year.

More than a dozen prominent Vietnamese political activists say police have stepped up surveillance and prevented them from leaving their homes in Hanoi. Despite sweeping economic and social reforms in the Vietnam, the ruling Communist Party retains tight controls on media and does not tolerate criticism.

Politics

Michael Cohen, the former “fixer” and personal lawyer for President Donald Trump, will testify that Trump knew ahead of time about a leak of emails that would hurt his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. Cohen will also tell Congress that Trump directed negotiations for a real estate project in Moscow even as he campaigned for the presidency and publicly stated he had no business interests in Russia. But Trump tweeted that his former lawyer Michael Cohen was lying in order to reduce his prison time.

Most Americans back transgender troops, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll. The U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 22 ruled in favor of letting the Trump administration enforce its policy of barring many transgender people from the military. Implementation of the policy has been delayed by legal wrangling in a lower court case that the Supreme Court did not directly address. But a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll conducted ahead of a congressional panel’s review of Trump administration curbs on transgender service found that nearly 60 percent of Americans said transgender people should be allowed to serve in the U.S. armed forces.

World

Pakistan carried out air strikes and shot down two Indian jets, Pakistani officials said, a day after Indian warplanes struck inside Pakistan for the first time since a war in 1971, prompting leading powers to urge both sides to show restraint. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan called for talks with India and hoped “better sense” would prevail to de-escalate the dispute with its nuclear-armed neighbor following air strikes by both sides

At least 25 people were killed and 50 injured when a locomotive smashed into a barrier at Cairo’s main train station, causing an explosion and a fire, state television and witnesses said. Security sources said there was no indication that the crash was deliberate.

On the day Cardinal George Pell was publicly revealed as a convicted child sex offender, his old high school in an Australian goldfields town physically scraped his name from one of its buildings. A thick black-taped line was also put through his once-revered name on a timber board of ordained alumni in the front offices of St Patrick’s College in Ballarat, the hometown of Pell, who was one of the highest ranking Vatican officials.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani rejected the resignation of Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, standing by a moderate ally long targeted by hardliners in factional struggles over a 2015 nuclear deal with the West. This is after U.S.-educated veteran diplomat who helped craft the pact that curbed Iran’s nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief - announced his resignation on Instagram.

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Reuters Top News

@Reuters

Two @Reuters journalists have been imprisoned in Myanmar for 443 days. See full coverage: reut.rs/2ToT1EM

5:35 AM - 27 Feb 2019

Brexit

How will Wednesday's parliamentary Brexit debate work?
British Prime Minister Theresa May wants to negotiate changes to the departure deal she agreed with the European Union last year and has promised to bring it back for approval in parliament by March 12 at the latest. She looks to have postponed a moment of reckoning in the deeply divided legislature by promising lawmakers they will be given the chance next month to block a no-deal Brexit and delay Britain’s exit day if her agreement is rejected. Today's debate will not involve a vote on whether to approve or reject a Brexit deal.

The risk that Britain will crash out of the EU without an agreement has receded in the past few weeks, some banks and asset managers say, citing expectations that the exit deadline will be extended to allow lawmakers to reach a deal. At the end of January, banks informally canvassed by Reuters for their forecasts saw the no-deal probability as low but rising. Some of those banks have since revised down that risk.