Nato ambassadors will meet in Brussels on Tuesday for a special session to discuss Turkey’s security situation and its ongoing air attacks, both against ISIS in Syria and against the Kurdish PKK in northern Iraq.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davotoglu said on Sunday night that his country had “no plans” to send ground troops into Syria, while Turkish air raids on Kurdish camps and a retaliatory ambush over the weekend appear to have effectively ended a two-year ceasefire. Reuters reports:
White House spokesman Ben Rhodes, on an official visit to Kenya with President Barack Obama, told a news conference in Nairobi: “The U.S. of course recognises the PKK specifically as a terrorist organisation. And so, again, Turkey has a right to take action related to terrorist targets. And we certainly appreciate their interest in accelerating efforts against ISIL.”
Patrick Cockburn writes at The Independent:
The US denies giving the go-ahead for Turkish attacks on the PKK in return for American use of Turkish air bases, or of any link with Turkish action against Isis fighters and volunteers, who were previously able to move fairly freely across Turkey’s 550-mile border with Syria.
But whatever America was hoping for, initial signs are that the Turkish government may be more interested in moving against the Kurds in Turkey, Syria and Iraq than it is in attacking Isis. Ankara has previously said that it considers both the PKK and Isis to be “terrorists”.
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* WORLD * As Greece prepares to re-start talks on Monday with its creditors over bailout terms, reports surfaced of contingency plans for a return to the Drachma which, Reuters reports, served to highlight the chaos within the ruling Syriza party.
A five-day humanitarian ceasefire in Yemen went into effect on Sunday, but there were reports of sporadic fighting in two cities, while a Saudi-led airstrike on the city of Taiz reportedly killed more than 100 people just before the ceasefire started.
http://twitter.com/zaidbenjamin/status/625518148893155328
President Obama is in Ethiopia and is set for talks on the region’s ongoing conflict in South Sudan. He is also set to address leaders of the African Union in Addis Ababa on Tuesday.
British Prime Minister David Cameron begins a four-day trade mission to SE Asia when he arrives in Jakarta on Monday. He aims to seal £750million worth of contracts for British businesses and is also expected to discuss the threat from Islamist terrorism with leaders in Indonesia and Malaysia.
The Independent also reported at the weekend that the promised British referendum on EU membership would be held in June next year and announced at the Tory conference in October.
Finally, the deputy leader of the House of Lords resigned after a story in The Sun accompanied by a video allegedly showing him snorting cocaine with prostitutes.
(The Sun/Tomorrow’s Papers Today)
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* POLITICS * The Democratic convention in Philadelphia is exactly one year away.
New polls in Iowa and New Hampshire show Hillary Clinton still with a clear – if slipping – lead over Bernie Sanders, but with the email story still bubbling as well as controversy over when and how she might testify on Benghazi, the former Secretary of State’s unfavorable ratings are trending upwards.
(YouTube/AmericaRising)
On the GOP side, polls in the early states show – yes – Donald Trump apparently consolidating his recent strong showing.
So you can probably expect to hear the word (ugh) Trumpmentum a few more times, at least while name recognition remains the leading indicator.
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* MEDIA * It’s been a tough few days for the New York Times. After the confusion over its Hillary Clinton email story,
(Kurt Eichenwald)
the New York Review of Books published a piece apparently undermining one of the Times’s recent big hits, on conditions in New York City nail salons.
But not so fast. Here’s a rebuttal to the rebuttal by the article’s editor.
http://twitter.com/palafo/status/625451369810526208
After announcing the sale of the Financial Times to Nikkei, Pearson is reported to be “in discussions” over the sale of its 50 per cent stake in The Economist, an asset that was held through the FT, but specifically excluded from the Nikkei deal.
The second part of an extensive series by the Washington Post examining “the human cost of reporting the news around the world” looks at the fate of journalism post-Arab Spring.
The Arab Spring was supposed to usher in an era of greater political inclusion and freedom, including press freedom. Instead, in every country but Tunisia, it has led to the opposite: the near-disappearance of independent news and opinion, especially about governments and their security forces.
And the Post also reported the passing of its former Diplomatic Correspondent Don Oberdorfer. He was 84.
“He was the kind of reporter who was so accurate and so fair that other reporters always read him, and so did the people in the government,” Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, said in an interview. “I don’t think there was any better-read reporter . . . in the foreign-policy business than Don Oberdorfer.”
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* BUSINESS * In a US record for such penalties, automaker Fiat Chrysler was ordered to pay a fine of up to $105million and buy back more than 500,000 vehicles in a settlement over a number of previous recalls.
“Today’s action holds Fiat Chrysler accountable for its past failures, pushes them to get unsafe vehicles repaired or off the roads and takes concrete steps to keep Americans safer going forward,” Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said Sunday. “This civil penalty puts manufacturers on notice that the department will act when they do not take their obligations to repair safety defects seriously.”
Burt, of Burt’s Bees fame, passed away earlier this month, it was reported at the weekend.
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* SPORTS * Chris Froome became the first Briton to win the Tour de France twice. This time in somewhat strange circumstances.
Mexico won the CONCACAF Gold Cup on Sunday night, beating Jamaica 3-1. Their captain Andres Guardado opened the scoring:
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* CULTURE * Bobbi Kristina Brown, daughter of the late singer Whitney Houston and R&B singer Bobby Brown, passed away aged 22, six months after being found unresponsive in a bathtub in her Georgia home.
The Overnight Note 