Rodrigo Duterte calls journalists ‘spies’ drawing laughs from Donald Trump - Independent

Rodrigo Duterte calls journalists ‘spies’ drawing laughs from Donald Trump as the pair avoid human rights questions

Filipino leader has been criticised over his violent crackdown on the drug trade

Jeff Farrell 12 hours

Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte drew laughs from Donald Trump when he jokingly called a group of journalists “spies” after they tried to raise the issue of human rights in his country.

The US president met his counterpart ahead of the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) conference which is being held in the country's capital Manila, amid a bloody drug war in the country.

Thousands have been killed in a violent crackdown on the illicit trade initiated by Mr Duterte, who has in the past told police that they were "free to kill idiots” if they resist arrest.

Donald Trump baffled by group handshake with fellow leaders

Campaigners had been hoping Mr Trump would press Mr Duterte over human rights issues. But when reporters shouted questions about the issue at the start of the summit he failed to answer.

Speaking after talks with his opposite number ahead of the conference, he said: “We’ve had a great relationship."

He added: "This has been very successful.”

Commenting on the sunny weather in Manila, he said: “I’ve really enjoyed being here.”

As reporters pushed on the issue, Mr Duterte stepped in.

Protesters burn Donald Trump effigy in the Philippines

“Whoa, whoa. This is not a press statement. This is the bilateral meeting," he said.

He then drew a chuckle from Mr Trump when he called the reporters “spies”, in an apparent joke.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that the 40-minute meeting between the US president and his counterpart focused on Isis, illegal drugs and trade.

She added that human rights briefly came up in the context of the Philippines' fight against illegal drugs, but did not say if Mr Trump was critical of the violent crackdown led by Mr Duterte.

A spokesman for the Philippine president, however, said that the pair had not discussed the issue.

He said: "There was no mention of human rights. There was no mention of extralegal killings. There was only a rather lengthy discussion of the Philippine war on drugs with President Duterte doing most of the explaining."

The Filipino leader has come under fire over the bloody war on drugs in the country that has targeted mostly users and dealers.

At least 3,000 people have been killed in the violent crackdown, according to government figures, while human rights groups have put the number closer to 9,000

How Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Purged Rivals - REUTERS

How Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Purged Rivals

by REUTERS

The first hint that something was amiss came in a letter.

On Nov. 4, guests at Riyadh's Ritz-Carlton were notified by the opulent hotel that: "Due to unforeseen booking by local authorities which requires an elevated level of security, we are unable to accommodate guests ... until normal operations are restored."

The purge was already under way. Within hours security forces had rounded up dozens of members of Saudi Arabia's political and business elite, mostly in the capital and the coastal city of Jeddah. Among them were 11 princes as well as ministers and wealthy tycoons.

Some were invited to meetings where they were detained. Others were arrested at their homes and flown to Riyadh or driven to the Ritz-Carlton, which has been turned into a temporary prison.

The detainees were allowed a single, brief phone call home, a person familiar with the arrests told Reuters

"They don't receive calls and are kept under tight security. No one can go in or out," the insider said. "It is obvious that there was a lot of preparation for it."

The purge was ordered by 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Officially next in line to the throne to his father, King Salman, he is now in effect running the country which he has said he will transform into a modern state.

To do that — and in an attempt to shore up his own power — he has decided to go after the Saudi elite, including some members of the royal family, on accusations such as taking bribes and inflating the cost of business projects. Those arrested could not be reached for comment.

At stake is political stability in the world's largest oil producer. The crown prince's ability to rule unchallenged depends on whether the purge is successful.

The crown prince believes that unless the country changes, the economy will sink into a crisis that could fan unrest. That could threaten the royal family and weaken the country in its regional rivalry with Iran.

Prince Mohammed decided to move on his family, the person familiar with events said, when he realized more relatives opposed him becoming king than he had thought.

"The signal was that anyone wavering in their support should watch out," said the person familiar with the events. "The whole idea of the anti-corruption campaign was targeted toward the family. The rest is window dressing."

King Salman said the purge was in response to "exploitation by some of the weak souls who have put their own interests above the public interest, in order to, illicitly, accrue money." Insiders said the accusations were based on evidence gathered by the intelligence service.

“He went to the meeting and never came back”

Government backers have rejected suggestions that the campaign is really about eliminating political enemies. There was no immediate comment from the royal court on this story.

Among those now holed up at the Ritz-Carlton hotel is Prince Miteb bin Abdullah, who is head of the powerful National Guard and Prince Mohammed's cousin.

Miteb was in his farm house in Riyadh when he was called to a meeting with the crown prince. Such an invitation, even at night, would not be unusual for a senior official and would not have aroused suspicion.

"He went to the meeting and never came back," said a second insider who has connections to some of those who were detained.

Others held include Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who is chairman of international investment firm Kingdom Holding and a cousin of Prince Mohammed, and Prince Turki bin Abdullah, former governor of Riyadh province and a son of the late King Abdullah.

Some royal watchers said tensions were laid bare during family meetings over the summer. One insider said it was widely known to Prince Mohammed that some of the powerful royals, including Miteb, were resentful about his elevation.

Prince Mohammed, who is widely known in Saudi Arabia by his initials MBS, had said openly in interviews that he would investigate the kingdom's endemic corruption and would not hesitate to go after top officials.

The vehicle was an anti-corruption committee created by King Salman, and announced on Nov. 4. The king put the crown prince in charge, adding another power to the many he has been given in the past three years.

Saudi authorities have questioned 208 people in the anti-corruption investigation and estimate at least $100 billion has been stolen through graft, the attorney-general said on Thursday. The head of the committee said investigators had been collecting evidence for three years.

Image: Saudi Arabian Prince Miteb bin Abdullah

Saudi Arabian Prince Miteb bin Abdullah Philippe Wojazer / Reuters file

By launching a war on corruption, the prince has combined a popular cause with the elimination of an obstacle to acceding to the throne.

"MBS used the corruption stick which can reach any one of them," said Jamal Khashoggi, a former adviser to Prince Turki al-Faisal, intelligence chief from 1979 to 2001. "For the first time we Saudis see princes being tried for their corruption."

But Khashoggi, who lives in the United States, said Prince Mohammed was being selective in his purge.

"I believe MB is a nationalist who loves his country and wants it to be the strongest but his problem is that he wants to rule alone," he said.

Theresa May to meet with EU business leaders amid deadlocked Brexit talks - Independent

Theresa May to meet with EU business leaders amid deadlocked Brexit talks

Carolyn Fairbairn, the CBI director general, said: 'This is an important meeting because the urgency that is shared by businesses across Europe is growing by the day'

Ashley Cowburn Political Correspondent

Theresa May will meet with European business leaders to discuss the future of UK-EU trade after Brexit as she is warned over the “urgency” to provide firms with certainty in the coming months.

The Prime Minister will use Monday’s meeting to attempt to win support from European businesses for her goal of moving the negotiations on to trade talks before Christmas.

But it comes after Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, warned that the bloc is drawing up contingency plans in case Brexit talks collapse. He said that failing to reach a deal with the UK was not his preferred option but was a “possibility”.

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“Everyone needs to plan for it, member states and businesses alike. We too are making technical preparations for it. On 29 March 2019, the United Kingdom will become a third country,” he told the French publication, Le Journal du Dimanche.

During the meeting in Downing Street on Monday, which the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has helped organised, Ms May will set out her vision of a “bold and deep economic partnership” between the UK and the EU after Brexit.

But the organisations, including Medef of France, Germany’s BDI and Spain’s CEOE, are expected to voice their concern over the progress of the Brexit negotiations.

EU making contingency plans for 'no deal' Brexit, Michel Barnier warns

Carolyn Fairbairn, the CBI director general, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “This is an important meeting because the urgency that is shared by businesses across Europe is growing by the day.

“The big message today is around mutual interest.”

She added that 10 per cent of firms had enacted their contingency plans to deal with Brexit and another 25 per cent would do so before the end of the year.

A leaders' summit will take place next month and the European Union's chief negotiator Michel Barnier has previously said the moment was approaching for a “real clarification” of Britain's position on issues such as citizens' rights, the Irish border and the UK's financial settlement.

If the 27 remaining EU members agree next month that sufficient progress has been made on these issues, they will give a green light for negotiations to move on to the questions of trade and transition to a new post-Brexit negotiation.

Boris Johnson should resign if British woman's jail term in Iran gets extended - Guardian

Boris Johnson should resign if British woman's jail term in Iran gets extended, says Labour MP - Politics live

Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen

Andrew Sparrow

Monday 13 November 2017

This is what Boris Johnson had to say about the Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe case when he arrived at the meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels this morning. He said:

Let me just say on Iran and on Iraq and consular cases generally, they are all very sensitive. And I think the key thing to understand is that we are working very, very hard and intensively and impartially on all of those cases.

Boris Johnson (left) and Greece’s foreign minister Nikos Kotzias at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels this morning.

Boris Johnson (left) and Greece’s foreign minister Nikos Kotzias at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels this morning. Photograph: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images

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MPs return to the Commons today after their mini recess to find that, just as on the day they left, Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, is in trouble. As well as facing criticism for some of his colleagues for apparently setting up a secret Vote Leave cabal with Michael Gove and dictating orders to Theresa May (well, sort of), he can’t get away from the trouble caused by his error about Nazanin Zahhari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman detained in Iran.

This morning the Labour MP Tulip Siddiq, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s local MP, said that if Zaghari-Ratcliffe spends “even one more day” in jail because of Johnson telling the foreign affairs committee that she was in Iran teaching people journalism, he should resign. (Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s family and employers say she was in Iran on a family holiday. Johnson subsequently told MPs he accepts that, but he has refused to admit that his original comment was wrong, instead insisting that it was misinterpreted.)

Siddiq told BBC Breakfast:

This issue isn’t political point-scoring for me; this about getting an innocent mother home. I’ve been campaigning on this for 18 months - if Boris Johnson is going to Iran then I have a few demands.

The first is that he needs to take my constituent, Richard Ratcliffe, with him.

When he gets to Iran, I want him to meet Nazanin face to face. There’s a history of British diplomats going to Iran, visiting the very prison that Nazanin is in and not getting to meet her

If the foreign secretary goes to Iran, meets Nazanin, takes Richard and officially retracts the statement he’s made then at least he’s trying to make amends for what he said.

But she added:

If my constituent spends even one more day in prison as a result of what the foreign secretary said then he should resign.

Richard Ratclifffe, Nazanin’s husband, has also been giving interviews this morning. He told the Today programme:

I don’t think it’s helpful for Nazanin at this point. I don’t think it’s helpful also in terms of who that looks in Iran for me to be looking like I’m playing politics. It is very important that the Iranians can see that this is just a family who are battling to bring Nazanin home, and not get this sense that we’re some sort of great Machiavellian power. We’re not.

I will post more from Ratcliffe’s interviews shortly.

Here is the agenda for the day.

11am: Downing Street lobby briefing.

1pm: The inquest opens into the death of Carl Sargeant, the Welsh government minister who apparently killed himself after being forced to stand aside on the basis of harassment allegations.

2.30pm: David Gauke, the work and pensions secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

At some point today Theresa May is meeting a delegation of European business leaders to discuss Brexit and the transition.

As usual, I will be covering breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I plan to post a summary at lunchtime and another in the afternoon.

You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here.

Here is the Politico Europe round-up of this morning’s political news from Jack Blanchard’s Playbook. And here is the PoliticsHome list of today’ top 10 must reads.

Claim that CO2 emissions had peaked was wrong and they are still rising, scientists warn UN - Independent

Claim that CO2 emissions had peaked was wrong and they are still rising, scientists warn UN

Andrew Griffin @_andrew_griffin 11 hours ago0 comments

Scientists' predictions that carbon emissions had peaked were actually far too optimistic and they will continue to rise this year, according to a major new study.

After claims that world CO2 emissions could soon start falling, new research has been presented at a UN meeting that says they will rise by 2 per cent this year to hit a new record.

Emissions had been roughly flat between 2014 and 2016, leading to hopes that one of the leading drivers of climate change would stay that way. But they are up this year in large part because of an increase in China, where emissions have fallen over the last couple of years.

Their data, presented during negotiations among almost 200 nations in Germany about details of the 2015 Paris Agreement climate accord, are a setback to a global goal of curbing emissions to avert more downpours, heat waves, and rising sea levels.

"The plateau of last year was not peak emissions after all," the Global Carbon Project, a group of 76 scientists in 15 countries, wrote of the findings.

250 companies responsible for one third of greenhouse gases

Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and industry, the bulk of man-made greenhouse gases, were on track to gain 2 percent in 2017 from 2016 levels to a record high of about 37 billion tonnes, it said.

"Global CO2 emissions appear to be going up strongly once again ... This is very disappointing," said lead researcher Corinne Le Quere, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia in Britain.

Glen Peters, another leader of the study at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research in Oslo, said China's emissions were set to rise 3.5 percent, driven by more coal demand amid stronger economic growth.

China, the top greenhouse gas emitter ahead of the United States, accounts for almost 30 percent of world emissions.

U.S. emissions were set to decline by 0.4 percent in 2017, a smaller fall than in recent years, also reflecting more burning of coal.

Coal's gains were linked to a rise in the price of natural gas that made coal more attractive in power plants, Peters told Reuters, rather than the effects of U.S. President Donald Trump's pro-coal policies.

Trump plans to pull out of the Paris Agreement.

Worldwide "we are probably in the level-to-upwards direction for emissions in the next years rather than level or downwards," Peters said, because of stronger global gross domestic product (GDP) growth.

Richard Black, director of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit think-tank who was not involved in the study, said carbon emissions per unit of GDP were falling.

This year "might well prove a small blip on an otherwise flattening emissions curve," he said.

Bob Geldof hands back his Freedom of Dublin honour in protest about Aung San Suu Kyi - Telegraph

Bob Geldof hands back his Freedom of Dublin honour in protest about Aung San Suu Kyi

Telegraph Reporters

13 NOVEMBER 2017

Bob Geldof is to hand back his Freedom of the City of Dublin, saying he does not want to be associated with the award while it is also held by Aung San Suu Kyi.

The Live Aid founder and musician blasted the Burmese Nobel peace laureate, who has faced widespread criticism over her country's treatment of its Rohingya Muslim minority.

In a statement he said: "Her association with our city shames us all and we should have no truck with it, even by default. We honoured her, now she appals and shames us.

Mr Geldof said he would hand back the freedom at City Hall in the Irish capital on Monday morning.

Irish-born Mr Geldof, who received an honorary knighthood from the Queen for his charity work, said he was a "proud Dubliner" but could not continue to hold the freedom while Ms Suu Kyi also held it.

Aung San Suu Kyi

Bob Geldof said he could not share the honour with Aung San Suu Kyi (pictured) CREDIT: HEIN HTET/EPA

He added: "In short, I do not wish to be associated in any way with an individual currently engaged in the mass ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people of north-west Burma.

"I am a founding patron of The Aegis Trust, who are concerned with genocide prevention and studies. Its founders built and maintain the National Holocaust Museum of the UK.

"I spoke at the inaugural National Holocaust Memorial Day at Westminster and in my time, I have walked amongst peoples who were sectionally targeted with ethnic cleansing.

"I would be a hypocrite now were I to share honours with one who has become at best an accomplice to murder, complicit in ethnic cleansing and a handmaiden to genocide."

More than 600,000 of the minority group have fled the northern Rakhine state into neighbouring Bangladesh since August, leading to a major humanitarian crisis.

It is not the first time Mr Geldof has spoken out against Ms Suu Kyi. Last month at a summit in Colombia he described her as "one of the great ethnic cleansers of our planet".

In his Sunday statement Mr Geldof added: "The moment she is stripped of her Dublin Freedom perhaps the council would see fit to restore to me that which I take such pride in. If not, so be it."

On Saturday fellow Irish musicians U2 also criticised Burma's civilian leader, urging her to fight harder against serious violence inflicted by the nation's own security forces.

The musicians, led by singer Bono, posted a lengthy plea on the band's website, saying they had tried several times to reach out to her directly.

They claimed that her failure to challenge the targeting of thousands of Rohingya was "starting to look a lot like assent".

They wrote: "So we say to you now what we would have said to her: the violence and terror being visited on the Rohingya people are appalling atrocities and must stop.

"Aung San Suu Kyi's silence is starting to look a lot like assent.

"As Martin Luther King said: 'The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people'.

"The time has long passed for her to stand up and speak out."

President Trump's Approval Rating Hit Another Low- Fortune

President Trump's Approval Rating Hit Another Low

By David Z. Morris November 5, 2017

As the one-year anniversary of his election victory nears, Americans disapprove of President Donald Trump at a higher rate than at any point in his presidency, according to a new poll.

That comes as Trump’s 37% approval rating is also lower than that of any president in the history of modern polling at the same point in their tenure, according to the Washington Post-ABC News poll. Trump’s approval ratings were historically low since the beginning of his term, at just over 44 percent, according to an aggregate of a dozen national polls. But despite repeated legislative failures and recent indictments of former Trump associates in Robert Mueller’s probe into possible collusion with Russia during the 2016 campaign, Trump’s approval rating has only gradually declined over his nine months in office.

Between mid-September and Nov. 1, the Post/ABC Poll found a 2% decline in Trump’s overall job approval. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of three Trump allies, including Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, became public just two days before the poll was conducted, so the numbers may not reflect the full impact of that development.

Nonetheless, the most important take-home here is less that Trump’s approval rating is low, than that it remains surprisingly high after an objectively troubled transition. The relative persistence of Trump’s support is an index of the polarization of American politics, and Trump’s strong connection with his base.

In particular, the poll found Trump’s approval rating is much higher among white voters, at 46%, than among minority voters, which is at 20% overall. There is an even greater spread between urbanites, 25% of whom approve of the president’s job performance, and rural voters, 52% of whom do. Trump also has higher approval among non-college graduates, though that spread is less dramatic, with about 10% lower approval among those with four-year degrees or more.

Trump’s ability to hang on to the support of his base may be particularly troubling for the fiscally conservative and pro-business wing of the Republican party. The recently-announced retirements of mainstream Republican Senators Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), for instance, can be substantially attributed to the fierce primary fights they were likely to face from Trump-aligned challengers.