No talks with Afghan’s Taliban, will 'finish' it: Donald Trump

Agencies
January 30, 2018

Washington, Jan 30: President Donald Trump told visiting members of the UN Security Council today the US would no longer talk with the Taliban following a recent string of deadly attacks in Afghanistan.

Trump railed against a series of "atrocities" in Afghanistan and said as a result the US would not engage in any future talks with the Taliban as the administration seeks to end a stalemate in America's longest war."Innocent people are being killed left and right. Bombing, in the middle of children, in the middle of families, bombing, killing all over Afghanistan," Trump said. "So we don't want to talk with the Taliban. There may be a time but it's going to be a long time."The president's comments followed a deadly car bombing attack in Kabul, the Afghan capital, that killed at least 95 people and wounded 158 more. Earlier this month, Americans were killed and injured in the Taliban's 13-hour siege of a hotel in Kabul.

Trump's remarks at the diplomatic luncheon marked a shift in tone on Afghanistan. The US has said previously that any peace talks with the Taliban need to be part of an Afghan-led process, but the US has never precluded talking to the Taliban.Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who sat next to the president at the luncheon, has said previously that after an effective military effort, a political settlement including some Taliban might be possible, echoing language from former President Barack Obama's administration.

 Tillerson had said the US would support peace talks with the Taliban "without preconditions."Earlier in the month, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who helped organize today's luncheon, said the US policy on Afghanistan was working and the parties were "closer to talks with the Taliban and the peace process than we've seen before."Several attempts to hold peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban have failed.

In 2013, hopes were raised when the Taliban opened an office in Qatar aimed at facilitating those talks, but a controversy over the Taliban's move to hoist the flag it used in Afghanistan during its five-year rule ultimately derailed the talks. Since then, efforts to lure the Taliban into talks have yielded little progress.

Trump has sought to change the course of the long-running conflict, sending thousands more US troops to Afghanistan and moving away from a "time-based" approach to one that more explicitly links US assistance to concrete results from the Afghan government.

There are now about 14,000 US forces there, and more trainers and advisers are scheduled to deploy in the coming months.Defence Secretary Jim Mattis earlier this month said this will make it possible for US advisers to serve with more of the Afghan units, strengthening them in the fight against the insurgents. The US-led coalition has also increased targeting of Taliban opium operations, including narcotic processing facilities in Helmand Province in the south.

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News Network
January 18,2020

New Delhi, Jan 18: Lieutenant Governor (LG) Anil Baijal has granted the power of detaining authority to the Delhi Police Commissioner under the National Security Act (NSA), according to a notification. The NSA allows preventive detention of an individual for months if the authorities feel that the individual is a threat to the national security, and law and order, sources said.

In exercise of the powers conferred by sub-section (3) of section 3, read with clause (c) of Section 2 of the National Security Act, 1980, the Lt Governor is pleased to direct that during the period January 19 to April 18, the Delhi Police Commissioner may also exercise the powers of detaining authority under sub-section (2) of the section 3 of the aforesaid Act, the notification stated.

The notification has been issued on January 10 following the approval of the LG.

It comes at a time when the national capital has been witnessing a number of protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC).

However, the Delhi Police said it is a routine order that has been issued in every quarter and has nothing to do with the current situation.

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News Network
June 3,2020

Washington, Jun 3: US President Donald Trump's administration on Tuesday announced investigations into foreign digital services taxes it says are aimed squarely at American tech firms.

Following a similar trade investigation against France last year, the US Trade Representative office now is looking into taxes in Britain and the European Union, as well as Indonesia, Turkey and India.

"President Trump is concerned that many of our trading partners are adopting tax schemes designed to unfairly target our companies," USTR Robert Lighthizer said in a statement.

"We are prepared to take all appropriate action to defend our businesses and workers against any such discrimination."

Washington opposes the efforts to tax revenues from online sales and advertising, saying they single out US tech giants like Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Netflix.

The US and France have agreed to negotiate till the end of the year over a digital services tax Paris approved in 2019, after USTR found them to be discriminating and threatened retaliatory duties of up to 100 percent on French imports such as champagne and camembert cheese.

Trump has embroiled the US in numerous trade disputes since taking office in 2017, including a months-long trade war with China that cooled with the signing of a partial deal in January.

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Agencies
July 7,2020

Washington DC, Jul 7: With US President Donald Trump promoting re-opening the economy, the country has now four epicentres of coronavirus instead of one -- Los Angeles, cities in Texas, cities in Florida and Arizona. This has led to the governors fearing that their hospitals could be overrun with patients.

"We are right back where we were at the peak of the epidemic during the New York outbreak...The difference now is that we really had one epicentre of spread when New York was going through its hardship. Now, we really have four major epicentres of spread -- Los Angeles, cities in Texas, cities in Florida and Arizona. Florida looks to be in the worst shape," Scott Gottlieb, former Food and Drug Administration commissioner was quoted by The Washington Post as saying in an interview.

As per the latest data, Florida, New York and California have crossed the 200,000 mark of coronavirus cases.

After Texas continued to break its own record of registering the highest number of coronavirus cases, Austin Mayor Steve Adler (D) was quoted as saying in an interview, "If we do not change this trajectory, then I am within two weeks of having our hospitals overrun."

He further said that intensive care units in the city will start overflowing within 10 days.

Echoing similar sentiments, Judge Lina Hidalgo, the top elected official in Harris County, said, "As long as we're doing as little as possible and hoping for the best, we are always going to be chasing this thing. We are always going to be behind and the virus will always outrun us...And so what we need right now is to do what works, which is a stay-home order."

She was stripped of authority to issue stay-at-home orders after Governor Greg Abbott decided to move forward with the reopening plan.

"It is clear that the (coronavirus) growth is exponential at this point...We have been breaking record after record after record... the last couple of weeks," Miami Mayor Francis Suarez was quoted as saying in an interview.

"The city of Miami was the last city in the entire state of Florida to open. I was criticized for waiting so long. But there is no doubt that the fact that when we reopened, people started socialising as if... the virus didn't exist."

He further said that if the numbers do not begin to fall "more drastic measures" will be taken in the coming week.

As per the latest update by the Johns Hopkins University, a total of 2,938,625 people in the US have tested coronavirus positive and 130,306 deaths have been reported so far.

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