Trump confirms US to pull out of nuclear treaty with Russia

President Donald Trump has said the US will pull out of a nuclear treaty with Russia because Moscow has violated the agreement.

The 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty helps protect the security of the US and its allies in Europe and the Far East.

It prohibits the US and Russia from possessing, producing or test-firing a ground-launched cruise missile with a range of 300 to 3,400 miles.

Mr Trump made the announcement during a campaign stop in Elko, Nevada, on Saturday.

He said: "Russia has not adhered to the agreement. So we are going to terminate the agreement.

"Russia has violated the agreement. They've been violating it for many years. I don't know why president Obama didn't negotiate or pull out.

"And we're not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons (while) we're not allowed to."

https:// news.sky.com/story/trump-confirms-us-to-pull-out-of-nuclear-treaty-with-russia-11531257

Latest communal violence in central Nigeria kills 55

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Nigeria’s government says 55 people have been killed in the latest eruption of communal violence in north-central Kaduna state.

A spokesman says President Muhammadu Buhari condemns the fighting that led to Thursday’s killings in Kasuwan Magani and that “frequent resort to bloodshed by Nigerians over misunderstandings that can be resolved peacefully is worrisome.”

Kaduna’s governor cites the state police commissioner as saying that more than 20 people have been arrested. The governor urges “peace and harmony despite ethnic and religious diversity.”

Central Nigeria has seen bouts of deadly communal violence that some blame on ethnic and religious differences and others blame on tensions over increasingly scarce resources in Africa’s most populous nation.

Nigeria is about equally divided between a largely Christian south and Muslim north.

https:// apnews.com/49430ae3e6584387a828b835e7dd3af5

Saudis admit to Jamal killing

After two weeks of shifting stories, Saudi Arabia said on Saturday that its agents strangled Jamal Khashoggi, a dissident journalist, during a fistfight inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and that 18 men had been arrested in the case.

Those arrested included 15 men who were sent to confront Khashoggi, plus one driver and two consular staff members, a Saudi official said.

Saudi state media reported that Saud al-Qahtani, a close aide to the crown prince, had been dismissed, along with Maj. Gen. Ahmed al-Assiri, the deputy director of Saudi intelligence, and other high-ranking intelligence officials. The Saudi official said General Assiri had organised the operation and that Qahtani had known about it and contributed to an aggressive environment that allowed it to escalate.

President Trump on Friday night said that Saudi Arabia’s statements were credible and that, along with its announcement of arrests, amounted to “good first steps”.

Trump, who has built strong ties with the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, said that he would consider “some form of sanction” in response, but that he “would prefer we don’t use as retribution” the cancellation of $110 billion worth of arms sales to the Saudis.

But Representative Adam Schiff of California was not buying the Saudi explanation. Schiff, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview on Friday night that “if Khashoggi was fighting inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, he was fighting for his life with people sent to capture or kill him”.

Schiff, who said he had received a detailed, classified briefing earlier in the day on what American spy services believe were the circumstances, said that the Saudi version “was not credible.” He said he could not disclose what the intelligence agency briefers told him.

Since Khashoggi disappeared after entering the consulate on October 2, Saudi Arabia has offered various, changing explanations for his disappearance, all of which seemed to distance top leadership from responsibility.

The Saudis initially claimed that Khashoggi had left the consulate alive and professed to be worried about his fate, later hinting that the killing might have been the act of rogue agents.

But international outrage mounted as Turkish officials leaked lurid details from their own investigation suggesting that he was murdered inside the consulate and dismembered by a team of Saudi agents who flew in specifically to kill him.

The case has battered the international reputation of the kingdom and the 33-year-old Prince Mohammed, who has sought to sell himself to the world as a young reformer shaking off his country’s conservative past. But suspicions that such a complicated foreign operation could not have been launched without at least his tacit approval have driven away many of his staunchest foreign supporters.

For the first time on Saturday, a Saudi official familiar with the government’s handling of the situation put forward the kingdom’s narrative of the events that led to Khashoggi’s death.

The kingdom had a general order to return dissidents living abroad, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was continuing. When the consulate in Istanbul reported that Khashoggi would be coming on October 2 to pick up a document needed for his coming marriage, General Assiri dispatched a 15-man team to confront him…

https://www.telegraphindia.com/world/saudis-admit-to-jamal-killing/cid/1672233

More Iranian Cabinet Ministers Resign Amid Economic Crisis

Iran's ministers of industry and roads have resigned, in the latest departures from President Hassan Rohani's government.

In a statement posted on the presidential website October 20, Rohani thanked Industry Minister Mohammad Shariatmadari and Roads Minister Abbas Akhoundi for their "selfless service" and "sincere efforts."

The two ministers reportedly handed in their resignations over a month ago as lawmakers were gearing up for impeachment hearings.

Rohani's labor and economy ministers were forced to resign in August, with lawmakers angry over their handling of the country's economic crisis.

The crisis has been fueled in part by the United States decision to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal and reimpose economic sanctions.

The U.S. decision to pull out of the deal has put major pressure on Rohani, who had lobbied hard for the deal despite opposition from Iranian hard-liners.

Rohani himself was summoned to answer questions in parliament in August, the first time that's happened during his five years in power.

https:// www.rferl.org/a/more-iranian-cabinet-ministers-resign-amid-economic-crisis/29554774.html

Israel delays eviction of West Bank Bedouin village

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday postponed the forced eviction of a Bedouin village in the occupied West Bank, a government official said.

The fate of Khan al-Ahmar has drawn international concern after Israel said it planned to raze the village, a ramshackle camp housing 180 residents.

Its residents, backed by foreign activists who have gathered at the site, have been waiting for bulldozers to move in at any time after an Oct. 1 deadline from Israel for the villagers to demolish their own homes expired.

The expulsion plan had included relocation to an area about 12 km (seven miles) away next to a landfill.

But an official in Netanyahu’s office, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said an alternative relocation plan was being looked at, in coordination with the Palestinian Authority.

“The goal is to fully exhaust negotiations and (examine) proposed plans submitted by various agents, including (those received) in the past few days,” the official said.

Palestinians say razing the village’s tents and tin shacks is part of an Israeli plan to create an arc of Jewish settlements that would effectively cut off East Jerusalem from the West Bank, areas captured by Israel in a 1967 war.

Most countries consider settlements built by Israel on land it captured in the 1967 Middle East War as illegal and say they reduce and fragment the territory Palestinians seek for a viable state. Israel disputes this.

Israel, which has long sought to clear the Arab nomads from tracts of land between the settlements of Maale Adumim and Kfar Adumim, said Khan al-Ahmar was built without the required permits. Palestinians say such documents are impossible to obtain.

The United Nations, European Union and human rights groups have urged Israel not to demolish Khan al-Ahmar, citing the impact on the community and prospects for peace.

Reporting by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Adrian Croft

https:// ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCAKCN1MU0WP-OCATP

Trump opposes halting Saudi arms deal after journalist death

US President Donald Trump warned Saturday against halting a Saudi arms deal, saying it would hurt American jobs, despite the international furor over the death in the conservative kingdom's Istanbul consulate of a dissident journalist.

"We have $450 billion, $110 billion of which is a military order, but this is equipment and various things ordered from Saudi Arabia," Trump told reporters about an agreement to sell weapons to Riyadh.

"It's over a million jobs; that's not helpful for us to cancel an order like that. That hurts us far more than it hurts them," he added, noting Riyadh could obtain the weapons from other countries like China or Russia.

"But there are other things that could be done, including sanctions."

Saudi Arabia has admitted that critic Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside its Istanbul consulate after an physical altercation, in a major dialing back of two weeks of denials, but the whereabouts of his body remain unclear.

Turkish officials have accused Riyadh of carrying out a state-sponsored killing and dismembering the body, which police have begun hunting for in an Istanbul forest.

Trump has said he found the explanation credible despite continued skepticism from some US lawmakers, including Republicans.

"It was a big first step. It was a good first step. But I want to get to the answer," Trump said of Saudi's acknowledgement that Khashoggi had died.

Trump has said that Saudi Arabia is valued as a historic customer for the US weapons industry, and that the US also relies on the kingdom in the fight against terror.

But the controversy over Khashoggi's death has evolved into a major crisis for Crown Prince Mohammed, a Trump administration favorite widely known as MBS whose image as a modernizing Arab reformer has been gravely undermined.

https:// www.afp.com/en/news/3954/trump-opposes-halting-saudi-arms-deal-after-journalist-death-doc-1a660t6

Skeptics Worldwide Bash Latest Saudi Story About Jamal Khashoggi

While President Donald Trump welcomed Saudi Arabia’s new statement confirming that journalist Jamal Khashoggi is indeed dead, blaming some kind of physical altercation in the kingdom’s consulate in Turkey, others in Washington and beyond expressed their stunned incredulity.

Saudi leaders had initially denied any part in the Washington Post columnist’s Oct. 2 disappearance. Intent on protecting the top tiers of the royal family, they had reportedly discussed blaming the incident on an interrogation accidentally gone wrong.

According to the kingdom’s official explanation, the dissident journalist was strangled in a fistfight involving 15 men sent to confront him.

Asked whether he thought the story was credible, Trump said, “I do.” He hailed the new information as a “good first step.”

Many others disagreed.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said the explanation was “preposterous” and called for U.S. action against the Saudis.

“America’s moral compass has come completely unmoored if we don’t take action,” Murphy said in a tweet….moar here

https:// www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/washington-skeptics-bash-new-khashoggi-explanation-by-saudis_us_5bcaad53e4b0a8f17eec76f7