News in Brief

Date: 15 May 2019 - 21:12

News ID: ۶۶۰۰۴

WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – U.S. media reports suggest President Donald Trump is considering replacing his hawkish National Security Adviser John Bolton over his plans to push the United States towards a military conflict with Iran, Venezuela and North Korea.
Bolton "is headed for the exits, having flown too close to the sun on his regime change efforts for Iran, Venezuela and North Korea,” The National Interest magazine reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.
"Hearing that Trump wants him out,” a former senior Trump administration official told the magazine.
There is speculation in Washington "that there’s now daylight between Trump and Bolton,” the report added.

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BRUSSELS (Reuters) -- A new European Union military pact risks shutting American companies out of defense contracts and undermining NATO, the United States has told the bloc, hinting at possible retaliation.
In a May 1 letter, the U.S. government said limitations on the involvement of non-EU countries under consideration in the European pact amounted to "poison pills.”
"It is clear that similar reciprocally imposed U.S. restrictions would not be welcomed by our European partners and allies, and we would not relish having to consider them in the future,” said the letter from two U.S. Department of Defense undersecretaries, Ellen Lord and Andrea Thompson, to the EU’s foreign affairs chief, Federica Mogherini.
Any rules limiting U.S. defense contractors’ participation would also amount to "a dramatic reversal of the last three decades of increased integration of the transatlantic defense sector,” said the letter, seen by Reuters.

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CARACAS (Dispatches) -- Venezuela’s top court accused four opposition lawmakers of treason on Tuesday, following similar accusations against 10 legislators this month.
The Supreme Court accused lawmakers Carlos Paparoni, Miguel Pizarro, Franco Casella and Winston Flores of treason and inciting rebellion.
Mexico’s foreign ministry said later on Tuesday it had received opposition lawmaker Franco Manuel Casella Lovaton in its embassy in Caracas "to provide protection and shelter.”
One opposition lawmaker was arrested and several took refuge in foreign embassies in Caracas or fled the country last week after similar accusations from the court.

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WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Wednesday that he’s traveling to three South Pacific island nations to see the effects of climate change firsthand.
Speaking in Fiji, the UN leader said he wanted to learn about the work being undertaken by island communities to bolster resilience. He said the Pacific needs stronger international support because climate change is taking place faster than efforts to address it.
"The last four years were the hottest on record. The loss of ice in Greenland and Antarctica is accelerating, meaning that sea levels will rise a full meter (over 3 feet) by 2100 if nothing is done to avoid it,” Guterres said. "Here in the Pacific, sea-level rise in some countries is four times greater than the global average and is an existential threat to some island states.”
Guterres made the comments at a meeting with officials from the Pacific Islands Forum in Suva, Fiji’s capital. He also plans to visit the island nations of Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

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BRUSSELS (Reuters) -- The European Union should allow Britain as much time as needed to reconsider Brexit, Poland’s Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz told Reuters.
Three years after the referendum vote to quit the European Union, Britain is still struggling to agree on how and whether to leave the EU, which has recently agreed to put off the departure day to October to give London time to regroup.
Poland’s ruling eurosceptics have long argued the EU needs to be more accommodating to London, disagreeing with a more hawkish camp led by France, whose President Emmanuel Macron had sought to attach strict conditions to any delay.
Czaputowicz said Britain should be given more leeway ahead.
"From Poland’s point of view, it would be good if Brexit would not happen,” he said in comments cleared for release late on Tuesday. "It’s a matter of changing the rhetoric to let the Brits rethink their decision.”

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BERLIN (AFP) -- Researchers in Germany have unearthed a new species of flying dinosaur that flapped its wings like a raven and could hold vital clues as to how modern-day birds evolved from their reptilian ancestors.
For more than a century and a half since its discovery in 1861, Archaeopteryx -- a small feathered dinosaur around the size of a crow that lived in marshland around 150 million years ago -- was widely considered to be the oldest flying bird.
Palaeontologists from Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU) in Munich and the University of Fribourg examined rock formations in the German region of Bavaria, home to nearly all known Archaeopteryx specimens.
They came across a petrified wing, which the team initially assumed to be the same species. They soon found several differences, however.
"There are similarities, but after detailed comparisons with Archaeopteryx and other, geologically younger birds, its fossil remains suggested that we were dealing with a somewhat more derived bird," said lead study author Oliver Rauhut from LMU's Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences.
They called the new bird-like dinosaur Alcmonavis poeschli -- from the old Celtic word for a nearby river and the scientist who discovered the fossil, excavation leader Roland Poeschl.