Free Republic

Germany’s Angela Merkel has rejected Boris Johnson’s pleas for face-to-face talks to help secure an 11th-hour Brexit deal, with a source saying she is “determined to make Britain crawl across broken glass” for an agreement. With December 13th becoming the latest “final” deadline for the talks to be pushed back yesterday — the first was in the summer — Boris Johnson has been trying desperately for a breakthrough, flying to Brussels to talk directly to European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and offering to do the same for high-profile national leaders such as Chancellor Merkel and France’s Emmanuel Macron.

Yeah, funny how all talk about the stimulus to help people just suddenly ended. The media is not talking about it either. NO ONE at the top cares about any of us. We are so stupid for worrying about who is in office anywhere and start doing something about all of this. Really.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Tuesday vowed to continue developing his country’s nuclear deterrent and introduce a “new strategic weapon” in 2020. In his annual New Year’s address, Kim said there was “no ground” for Pyongyang to maintain the moratorium on missile tests, with the country set to continue developing strategic weapons unless the US gave up its hostile approach. He also threatened that the US would "suffer helplessly" if there continued to be delays in talks aimed at dismantling his country’s nuclear and missile programs. Kim’s comments came after the US missed his deadline of December 31...

A woman walks into a bank in New York City and asks for the loan officer. She says she's going to Europe on business for two weeks and needs to borrow $5,000. The bank officer tells her that the bank will need some kind of security for such a loan, so the woman hands over the keys to a new Rolls Royce that's parked on the street in front of the bank. Everything checks out, and the bank agrees to accept the car as collateral for the loan. An employee drives the Rolls Royce into the bank's underground garage and...

Link Only: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-16/china-to-send-group-to-u-s-for-first-trade-talks-since-june

The Syrian government and its closest military ally - Russia - have intensified their bombing campaign Thursday in the southern province of Deraa, after ceasefire deal between rebels and Russians broke down. Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr, reporting from Beirut, said that had airstrikes intensified on Thursday as government troops advanced steadily to recapture lost territory. “The relative lull in the fighting has now been shattered following the collapse of peace talks. Syrian government and Russian planes have been targeting a number of rebel-held towns in the province,” Khodr said. “Dozens of airstrikes were reported by activists, mainly targeting the towns...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held rare talks with King Abdullah II of Jordan during an unannounced visit to Amman on Monday, official sources in the two countries said. The two leaders discussed the stalled peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, the Jordanian royal court said in a statement. Jordan and Egypt are the only Arab countries to have peace treaties with Israel, and Monday’s visit was Netanyahu’s first to the kingdom since 2014. “The king and the prime minister discussed regional developments as well as advancing the peace process and bilateral relations,” the Israeli leader’s spokesman Ofir Gendelman...

Very impressive interview. obama wouldn't blew Rodman off. Trump listened.

My, but two hundred years pass by quickly. After Donald Trump announced a new round of sanctions on Friday morning at CPAC, North Korean state media declared that it might take two centuries until the Kim regime would be willing to talk with the US. Forty-eight hours later, South Korea president Moon Jae-in announced that Pyongyang wants to talk now — and Moon is pressing for a meeting ASAP: In a possible diplomatic breakthrough, North Korea says it is willing to hold talks with the U.S. The message came through South Korean President Moon Jae In, who also met...

YPJ spokeswoman and commander Nesrin Abdullah is in Stockholm for diplomatic talks. Speaking at a press conference in the Swedish parliament, Nesrin Abdullah, spokeswoman and commander for the Women's Defense Units (YPJ) in Rojava, drew attention to the Turkish regime's intention to carry out a genocide on the population in Afrin with jihadist militias. Nesrin Abdullah explained to numerous journalists that in Afrin so far, a peaceful coexistence of different ethnic groups and faiths has taken place. "For 20 days, the NATO member Turkey has been attacking Afrin in front of the world public. These attacks are contrary to international...

RIO GRANDE CITY, Tex. — Caught quite literally in the middle of the international debate over the way the United States trades with its southern neighbor are two Texans named Sam. Sam Vale and Sam Sparks Jr. own two bridges that stretch across the Rio Grande, connecting farmers on either side with markets on the other, and linking communities in South Texas and northern Mexico that sometimes meet in the middle. Major retailers and manufacturers are mobilizing to keep the deal alive and to protest rules that could make it more expensive to bring parts and products in from Mexico....

New York state budget talks collapsed Wednesday night after members of the Senate left the Capitol, with lawmakers from both parties blaming Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo for scuttling negotiations over the spending plan, now several days late. Members of the Senate and Assembly insist they were close to an agreement and hoped to pass a budget this week after blowing past a Saturday deadline. Those hopes eroded Wednesday night after the Democratic governor summoned reporters to his office to say that while he would continue to negotiate, there was no final agreement. Less than an hour later the Senate walked...

President Clinton and his wife, Hillary, invited a group of popular self-help authors to Camp David to help them dissect what had happened in the first two years of the presidency and to search for a way back after the Democrats' devastating loss to the Republicans in the 1994 congressional elections. They met the weekend beginning Friday, Dec. 30, 1994. The first was Jean Houston, co-director of the Foundation for Mind Research, which studies psychic experience and altered and expanded consciousness. ”I was misunderstood, Hillary replied, her eyes still shut, speaking as Mrs. Roosevelt." You have to do what you...

hina did not participate in and has refused to accept the July 12 ruling by the U.N.-backed Permanent Court of Arbitration, in which U.S. ally Manila won an emphatic legal victory. Meeting in the Laos capital Vientiane on Monday during a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Kerry that China and ASEAN had agreed the dispute should get back onto the "correct" track of being resolved by direct talks with the parties concerned. China "hopes the United States side talks actual steps to support the resumption of talks between China and...

On Tuesday’s radio program, Conservative Review Editor-in-Chief Mark Levin chastised Donald Trump for insisting that the Republican “primary system is rigged.” The system is not rigged, Levin said, and yet Mr. Trump sounds like an entitled liberal demanding delegates from Colorado without having put in the work to win them. It sounds like Mr. Trump is demanding “delegate welfare,” said Levin. The delegate appointment rules in most of these primaries have been established for nearly a century. In Colorado, for example, the rules for this primary process have been in place since 1912. “Has the system been corrupt for 100...

Top diplomats of Russia, US, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia have discussed a range of global issues, including the ongoing situation in Syria. Russian, US, Saudi Arabian and Turkish foreign ministers discussed specific ideas on the situation in Syria during their meeting in Vienna, and decided to maintain contacts, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday. "We have expressed a number of specific ideas on all issues which were discussed with our colleagues from the United States, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, these ideas will be continued, I hope. We have agreed to continue contacts, and we stressed the need to make...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Amid increasing unease and uncertainty over Russia's intentions, the Obama administration plans to accept an offer from Russia for direct talks on its military buildup in Syria that U.S. officials believe is aimed at propping up Syrian President Bashar Assad.

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) — Iran and six world powers have agreed on the outlines of an understanding to limit Iran’s nuclear programs, negotiators indicated Thursday, as both sides prepared for announcements.

With a deadline just hours away, negotiators from the United States, Iran and five other nations appeared on Tuesday to be struggling to move closer to a preliminary accord to limit Tehran’s nuclear program, and signaled that they might be prepared to work into Wednesday. Even if an agreement is struck, there have been signs that several of the most difficult issues will be deferred for a final agreement in three months.

Iran Nuclear Talks 'Enter Endgame' In Switzerland How close is a final nuclear deal on Iran? Talks on Iran's nuclear programme have entered their "endgame", Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has said. Negotiators from six world powers are attempting to strike a deal with Iran to restrict its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief. The parties have set a deadline of the end of March to reach an agreement.