Prez Trump to sign defence spending bill
President Donald Trump on Monday was scheduled to sign a defence spending bill that amends an existing law that seeks to punish Russia by threatening secondary sanction against countries planning significant military purchases from Moscow.
Trump was to sign the bill — essentially the defence department’s budget for 2019 — at a formal ceremony at Fort Drum, a military facility in New York state, the White House said in an announcement.
The bill amends the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) to grant waivers against certain conditions, which India fulfils easily.
The amendment will come as a great relief for India, which could have been affected by the bill — New Delhi has been in talks with Russia since 2015 to buy five S-400 air defence missile systems for an estimated cost of $4.5 billion.
In 2017, the US enacted CAATSA to punish Russia for meddling in the 2016 election by scaring away its major exporters of military- and intelligencerelated goods.
This law went into effect in January and directly put India in the crosshairs for secondary sanctions if it went ahead and bought the S-400 systems.
The legislation also formalises the renaming of the US Pacific Command as the Indo-Pacific Command, a move intended to signal growing defence ties between India and the US.
The bill also cuts security aid to Pakistan to $150 million, down from the billions received earlier as a frontline state against terror.
FBI AGENT SACKED FOR ANTI-TRUMP MESSAGES
The FBI has fired longtime agent Peter Strzok, who once worked on special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation over text messages criticising Trump.
Strzok was removed from Mueller’s team a year ago after the text messages were first discovered, and the FBI had been reviewing his employment.
OMAROSA RELEASES ANOTHER RECORDING
Former presidential adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman released another audio recording Monday that she says features Trump, as she threatened to “blow the whistle” on White House corruption.
The recording is purportedly a phone conversation between Trump and Manigault Newman after she was fired from the White House.
It appears to show Trump saying that “nobody even told me about it”. HTC & AGENCIES