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18 June, 2013 Leave a comment

18, June 2013 CANADA NEWS

**Quebec Premier Pauline Marois says Montreal Mayor Michael Applebaum should step down following his arrest yesterday.**

Barack Obama, President of the United States of America, with Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

**The U.S. ambassador to Canada hopes the G8 summit will provide the forum for a group of the world’s wealthiest nations — including Russia — to find common ground to calm the deadly crisis in Syria.**

**U.S. Ambassador David Jacobson who leaves his post in Ottawa in four months comments come after Prime Minister Stephen Harper slammed Russia for supporting the “thugs of the Assad regime” and ostracized the country by calling the G8 “the G7 plus one.” He also described President Vladimir Putin’s position as not “justifiable” and predicted no consensus unless the Russian leader had a “big shift of position” on Syria.**

**Harper has raised concerns about the dangers of arming rebels because the groups are so fractured,with some tied to Islamist forces, but the U.S. is channelling its support to “moderate forces” based on intelligence gathered**

G8 SUMMIT Northern Ireland

U.S. President Barack Obama meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, Monday. They discussed the ongoing conflict in Syria during their bilateral meeting.

Photo – U.S. President Barack Obama meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, Monday. They discussed the ongoing conflict in Syria during their bilateral meeting.

**Obama acknowledged in a bilateral meeting with Putin in Northern Ireland that they have a “different perspective” on Syria but he said that both leaders wanted to address the fierce fighting and also wanted to secure chemical weapons in the country. The U.S. president said both sides would work to develop talks in Geneva aimed at ending the country’s bloody civil war.**

**Putin said “of course our opinions do not coincide, but all of us have the intention to stop the violence in Syria and to stop the growth of victims and to solve the situation peacefully, including by bringing the parties to the negotiations table in Geneva. We agreed to push the parties to the negotiations table.”**

**British Prime Minister David Cameron, the host of the meeting of top industrialised powers, insisted he could overcome his differences with Russian President Vladimir Putin after they held pre-summit talks in London.**

**Cameron said: “What I take from our conversation today is that we can overcome these differences if we recognise that we share some fundamental aims: to end the conflict, to stop Syria breaking apart, to let the Syrian people decide who governs them and to take the fight to the extremists and defeat them.”

Putin insisted that Moscow had abided by international law when supplying weapons to Assad’s regime and demanded that Western countries contemplating arming rebels do the same. “We are not breaching any rules and norms and we call on all our partners to act in the same fashion,” Putin said.
The Russian leader referred to a video released last month purportedly showing a rebel Syrian fighter eating the heart of a dead soldier. He asked if the West really wanted to support rebels “who not only kill their enemies but open up their bodies and eat their internal organs in front of the public and the cameras”.**

**Cameron will host Obama, Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the summit. Other leaders invited are from the EU, Mexico, Libya and Ethiopia. **

**The summit is surrounded by the biggest security operation in Northern Ireland’s troubled history, with around 8,000 officers on duty. Heavily armed police in armoured Land Rovers are stationed at frequent intervals along the country roads leading to the summit venue near the town of Enniskillen. Police say the expected anti-globalisation demonstrations have been smaller than expected so far. They expect around 2,000 protesters to take part in an anti-G8 march in Enniskillen on Monday.**

18, June 2013 US NEWS

**The report by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission**

For the first time China is close to reaching a “credible” nuclear deterrent based on land-based, submarine-launched and air-dropped nuclear weapons.
The report by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission said China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, “continues to modernize and expand its nuclear stockpile.”
“China is now on the cusp of attaining a credible nuclear triad of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and air-dropped nuclear bombs.” the annual report, scheduled to be delivered to the US Congress on Wednesday.
China has had “a symbolic ballistic missile submarine capability” for decades, based on a single aging submarine, but it is now close to having its first “credible, near-continuous at-sea strategic deterrent,” the report said.
Two JIN-class submarines capable of launching missiles have already been deployed and three more are planned. They will be equipped with JL-2 intercontinental ballistic missiles — a program still in development that “may reach initial operating capability within the next two years,” the report said, quoting the US Department of Defense.
China has been a nuclear power since 1964, and the country currently has between 50 and 75 land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles. China also has some 20 long-distance aircraft able to deliver nuclear bombs, according to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), also cited in the report.The report cautioned that the Asian giant “has disclosed little information about the size, composition, and disposition of its nuclear forces, which yields uncertainties about the size and characteristics of its warhead inventory.”
“Outside assessments from western observers, which generally range from about 100 to 500 warheads, but cluster around 240, rely heavily upon assumption,” the report said.
Also worrisome to US officials is the relationship between China’s civilians and their military. “What worries me most are the disconnects that tend to occur between (China’s) government and their military,” said former US Joint Chiefs of Staff vice chairman James Cartwright in testimony to the commission. **