Breaking News, 5rd of May, 2018

The US delegation, led by Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, completed two-day talks with Chinese officials, but the parties could not agree on ending the trade war, Bloomberg reports. One of the main requirements of the US was to reduce the trade deficit between the countries by at least $ 200 billion. Washington also insisted on the withdrawal of some of the lawsuits of the PRC from the WTO. Beijing demanded an end to the investigation of the theft of US intellectual property by companies from China, as well as the cancellation of the additional duties of 25% on the goods imported from China. According to experts, the US want too much from China, and Beijing is ready for negotiations, but not for surrender.

The President of Moldova, Igor Dodon, announced the launch of the procedure for changing the country’s constitution for moving it to the presidential form of government. According to him, this reform was already supported by 1.5 million people. The head of the republic noted that this initiative will be proposed to the current Moldovan parliament. If initiative will be rejected — it will become the main point of the pre-election program of the Socialist Party at the autumn elections.

US Secretary of State, Michael Pompeo, announced that the State Department intends to «help» Venezuela, which, according to Washington, suffers from the actions of the «dictator» that causes «the once prosperous and democratic nation to suffer.» The United States intends to involve «State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in addressing this problem.» Washington, according to Pompeo, is going to «help the millions of Venezuelans who are hiding from the corrupt regime that is a result of a crisis created by human hand.»

The profile committee of the House of Representatives of the US Congress will consider the draft budget of the Pentagon on 9th of May. The draft proposes to allow the military department to partially not comply with anti-Russian sanctions. The White House and the Pentagon want to get an opportunity to cooperate with countries that had «ties» with Russia, and who purchased Russian equipment. According to the chief of the Pentagon, James Matthies, the application of the law on sanctions threatens to paralyze part of the US foreign and military policy, TASS reports. The US law «On Countering America’s opponents through sanctions» provides the sanctions against Russia, Iran and the DPRK, and companies from third countries that cooperates with them.

n 2017, the number of phone calls that the National Security Agency tracked was three times higher than in comparison with 2016, the organization announced in its annual report. In 2017, the NSA intercepted more than 534 million phone calls. At the same time, it is underlined that it is a number of individual calls, and not the number of people. The list includes calls from both foreign and American numbers.

Ukrainian forces fired at LPR positions four times over the past day. The areas of Frunze, Kalinovo, Zhelobok and Veselogorovka were under fire. In the DPR, during the same period, 25 violations of the ceasefire were recorded. The outskirts of Donetsk and Yasinovatoy, the villages of Spartak and Mineralnoye, the villages of Verkhnetoretskoe Nizhne, Golmovsky, Zaitsevo, Ozerianovka, as well as Dokuchaevsk and other southern villages of the Republic were under fire. During the shelling, artillery, mortars of various calibers, IFV weaponry, grenade launchers and small arms were used.