Six In The Morning Saturday January 14

Trump 'willing to work with Russia and China'

US President-elect Donald Trump says he is willing to work with Russia and China, providing they cooperate.

Mr Trump told the Wall Street Journal that newly-imposed sanctions on Russia would remain "at least for a period of time" but could then be lifted.

He also said the One China policy, in which the US does not recognise Taiwan, was up for negotiation.

Meanwhile, a US Senate committee announced it would investigate claims Russia meddled in the election.

In his interview, Mr Trump said sanctions on Russia could be lifted if Moscow helped Washington in the war against Islamic extremism and in other matters.

"If you get along and if Russia is really helping us, why would anybody have sanctions if somebody's doing some really great things?"

Former MI6 agent Christopher Steele's frustration as FBI sat on Donald Trump Russia file for months

Exclusive: Steele was so concerned by revelations he worked without payment after Trump's election victory in November

Kim Sengupta Defence Editor

Christopher Steele, the former MI6 agent who investigated Donald Trump’s alleged Kremlin links, was so worried by what he was discovering that at the end he was working without pay, The Independent has learned.

Mr Steele also decided to pass on information to both British and American intelligence officials after concluding that such material should not just be in the hands of political opponents of Mr Trump, who had hired his services, but was a matter of national security for both countries.

Greek Cypriot President Anastasiades and Turkey's Erdogan clash over troops on Cyprus

The presence of Turkish troops on a potentially reunited Cyprus has split leaders taking part in UN-sponsored talks. Ankara has said a Greek Cypriot call for Turkish troops to leave the island was "out of the question."

After a week-long conference in Geneva on the possible reconciliation of Cyprus' Greek and Turkish halves, statements from Greek Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have left a possible reunification in serious doubt. At the center of the disagreement are the approximately 30,000 Turkish troops stationed on the island.

"Our position remains... that we must agree on the withdrawal of the Turkish army," Anastasiades told reporters in Geneva on Friday.

The Greek Cypriot foreign minister, Nikos Kotzias, also said there was no way to reunify the island while "occupation" troops are still stationed on it.

When the grass wasn’t green enough, Saudi officials got out the spray paint

City officials in Mejarda, a Saudi town on the border with Yemen, decided that things needed a quick sprucing up before the visit of a VIP. And so, the day before his arrival, workers descended on the city’s parks and lawns to spray paint the grass a bright, lively green. 

Fayçal Bin Khaled, the Emir of El Assir province, was scheduled to visit the town of Mejarda on January 11. Local residents filmed the hasty preparations for this visit, which included spray painting the grass bright green. 

According to locals, workers used paint to touch up all of the gardens and green spaces along the route that the emir would take through town.

Abducting social activists

PERVEZ HOODBHOY

HAD last week’s kidnappings of bloggers and social media activists happened in Balochistan, it would have been a non-event. But all five abductions happened in Punjab — and now the authorities are feeling some heat.

Salman Haider — a lecturer at the Fatima Jinnah Women’s University in Rawalpindi — was intercepted while driving on Islamabad Expressway on his way home. Others were picked up from Lahore and near about. They include social activist Samar Abbas, social media bloggers Aasim Saeed, Ahmad Waqas Goraya, and Ahmed Raza Naseer — who suffers from polio. Their whereabouts are unknown as of the time of this writing. Still others are said to be missing with families too fearful to register formal complaints.

Strategy for handling North Korea nukes: tailored deterrence

South Korean press reports indicate the tailored deterrence strategy contains options for preemptive strikes in case of an imminent threat of North Korea using nuclear weapons

By MICHAEL RASKA JANUARY 13, 2017 11:01 PM

During the first North Korea nuclear crisis in 1993-1994, the administration of US President Bill Clinton considered preemptive air strikes on nuclear facilities and ballistic missile sites in the North.

Specifically, this involved the use of cruise missiles and F-117 stealth fighters to destroy North Korea’s plutonium reactor site at Yongbyon. At that time, the US Air Force at the Kunsan Air Base deployed six F-117s.

However, the decision was put on hold given the retaliatory and escalation risks that could lead to a major conflict on the Korean Peninsula.