Week in Review: Trump Hosts Britain, Peace Process Shake-up, Australia Courts China, Russia Bunkers Down in Syria, and More

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Week in Review: Trump Hosts Britain, Peace Process Shake-up, Australia Courts China, Russia Bunkers Down in Syria, and More

All you need to know about everything in the news this week

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Highlights:

Will America and Britain lead the world again?

  • British Prime Minister Theresa May became the first foreign leader to visit the White House and meet with United States President Donald Trump on Friday.
  • Both leaders have vowed to make the relationship between their countries special again. But will they succeed? Has the damage already been done under the Obama administration? Is this Reagan and Thatcher all over again?
  • Will America and Britain become great again?
  • Palestinians want a new broker for the peace process

  • “[W]e won’t return to the vicious circle of U.S.-brokered bilateral negotiations,” Wasil Abu Yousef, a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (plo), told Asharq Al-Awsat.
  • “We want to end the occupation and protect our people’s rights, not return to negotiations for the sake of negotiating.”
  • Abu Yousef said the U.S. has not proved to be an impartial mediator in the peace process.
  • It’s highly plausible that both the Palestinians and the Israelis will be compelled to find a new, mutually acceptable broker. Europe could be it.
  • Putin’s foothold in Syria

  • Russia engaged in its first military conflict since the Cold War outside former Soviet Union borders in September 2015, when it launched airstrikes in Syria.
  • It is there to stay, apparently.
  • “While the world warily eyed Donald Trump’s inauguration on Friday, Russia and Syria signed a long-term basing agreement giving Russian ships and planes access there for 50 years, a major commitment that underscores Russian President Vladimir Putin’s years-long effort to restore Russia’s once-powerful role in the Eastern Mediterranean,” Foreign Policy wrote on January 21.
  • How will Europe react?
  • Australia, New Zealand Look to China

  • Senior officials in Australia and New Zealand said on Tuesday that they hope to salvage the Trans-Pacific Partnership by encouraging China to take America’s place as a member state.
  • American involvement in the tpp was ended by United States President Donald Trump this week via Executive Order.
  • “The United States and Britain are going to be left out in the cold as two gigantic trade blocs, Europe and Asia, mesh together and begin calling the shots in world commerce,” wrote Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry in July 2016.
  • Bible prophecy indicates that “these nations … are going to be literally besiegedeconomically frozen out of world trade!”
  • Regime change in North Korea?

  • North Korean elites are growing increasingly dissatisfied with supreme leader Kim Jung-un.
  • “Low-level dissent or criticism of the regime, until recently unthinkable, is becoming more frequent,” said prominent defector and former deputy ambassador to Britain, Thae Yong-ho.
  • “We have to spray gasoline on North Korea and let the North Korean people set fire to it.”
  • Disturbingly, Thae told the bbc that he believes Kim “will press the button on … dangerous [nuclear] weapons” to destroy Los Angeles “when he thinks that his rule and his dynasty is threatened.”
  • Other news:

  • On January 24, Geostrategy-Direct said it is increasingly evident that Japan is taking up the “leadership role” in “allies’ defense buildup against China.”
  • United States President Donald Trump tweeted on Tuesday evening: “If Chicago doesn’t fix the horrible ‘carnage’ going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24 percent from 2016), I will send in the Feds!”
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