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Call for formal apologies from countries that benefited from transatlantic trade slave included in 19-point roadmapMore than money: the logic of slavery reparationsA global framework for reparatory justice has been adopted at a conference in Ghana, as African and Caribbean leaders demanded formal apologies from countries that benefited from the transatlantic slave trade.Heads of state and government and other officials formally approved the strategy on Friday at a gathering in a hotel in the capital, Accra, which was the first major meeting since the adoption of the landmark United Nations (UN) resolution declaring the trafficking of enslaved Africans as the gravest crime against humanity. Continue reading...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio scrambled for a printer inside the Palace of Versailles after President Donald Trump went to the sign his Iran deal — without bringing a copy with him.A new report sheds light on the chaotic behind-the-scenes details of how the historic agreement came together.According to Agence France-Presse, Trump decided to sign at a candlelit dinner in Versailles "quite spontaneously" — the text hadn't even been printed, leaving Rubio to hunt down a printer somewhere inside the grand palace.When Trump finally put pen to paper, he used a fat black marker, the crockery still on the table after a dinner of lobster and caviar.The deal itself had been announced three days earlier — on Trump's 80th birthday, June 14 — while he was still in Washington, celebrating by watching MMA cage fights at the White House.The signing venue had shifted multiple times. French President Emmanuel Macron had said the deal had already been signed "electronically." It had then been expected that Vice President JD Vance would formalize it with top Iranian negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf in Switzerland. Trump then muddied the waters by saying it would be signed "tomorrow, maybe the next day" — before simply signing it himself at the Versailles dinner, reportedly impressed by the palace's "golden splendor."Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed his own copy in a parallel move, with Iranian news agencies showing him brandishing the document for the cameras.The follow-on talks at the luxury Bürgenstock resort in Switzerland — a mountaintop complex where hotel guests had reportedly been quietly asked to leave — were postponed at the last minute, reportedly due to Israeli military action against Hezbollah in Lebanon late Thursday.Journalists waiting on the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base to fly to the meeting with Vice President JD Vance received a terse message: the vice president wasn't leaving that evening.Iran said Friday there was now "no urgency," but that it was "planning to hold a meeting in the coming days."

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According to former CIA official Marc Polymeropoulos, Donald Trump’s Iran deal, which has set off a deluge of criticism within the Republican Party, has left the leadership of Israel in a state of shock.Appearing on MS NOW with “Morning Joe” co-host Willie Geist, Polymeropoulos, who just returned from Tel Aviv, claimed he found a sense of betrayal during his visit. Geist prompted the 26-year veteran of the CIA with, “Marc, take us to Tel Aviv this morning. And what Bibi Netanyahu must be thinking; that he got his man in the White House in Donald Trump, that he went to the Situation Room, sold the war successfully. He thought that Donald Trump, the United States military, would come in and finish off Iran, take out the regime, and now he sits here this morning with this memorandum of understanding anyway, with explicit language that says there can be no attacks on Lebanon.”“So the Israelis I speak with are in a state of panic, one former Mossad official said, literally, ‘I can't believe this is happening,’” he reported. “But in some ways they should have known better,” he explained. “And one analyst actually told me, ‘Look, you know, Benjamin Netanyahu decided to ride the tiger — that's Donald Trump. And the tiger just turned around and just bit him on the rear end.’”“And like many of us predicted he would, he continued, “Because Trump was no dedicated, you know, savior. He was not the messiah for Israel. He's too transactional.”“Let me just add one quick thing, Willie,” he insisted. “Let's not forget at the end of the Biden administration, if you calculate what President Biden did after October 7th, he gave the Israelis $18 billion in military aid. Yet somehow, he is seen as not a supporter of Israel. That was preposterous. And right now, I think the Israelis are realizing that Trump was not who they thought he was, and that this MOU actually puts them in a very precarious national security situation, particularly in terms of ballistic missiles and what to do about Hezbollah, a terrorist entity sitting on their northern border.” - YouTube youtu.be

Donald Trump's highly controversial Iran peace deal is causing the Republican Party no small measure of angst, with conservative journalist David Drucker half-jokingly stating on MS NOW that the GOP is caught up in the throes of the “35 stages of grief" — a far cry from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's "5 stages of grief" when death approaches.Appearing on “Morning Joe,” the conservative “The Dispatch” pundit attempted to explain how Republicans — with Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) leading the charge — are laboring to defend the president just moments after co-host Mika Brzezinski read off widespread criticisms of the president and his deal from GOP lawmakers and conservative media outlets.Asked what he is hearing, Drucker reported, “We've talked about this before, but, you know, there were so many Republicans in Congress and and center-right thinkers who have believed that after nearly 50 years, the action President Trump took going to war against Iran with israel was a courageous decision, was the right decision, and the United States needed to see it through.”“And they were very gratified by the president's policy here,” he added, “And now they're going through the, you know, the 35 stages of grief, which is ‘If this is true, it's going to be really bad. Well, I don't know if it's true because I haven't seen the text. I'm not going to react until I've seen the text. All right. Well, I've seen the text, and now that I've, you know, now that I've looked at the text, maybe it's really not so bad because look, he did say he'll bomb them if they don't follow through.’”“There are others who are just very honest about their disappointment, about their disappointment with both President Trump and the deal,” he added. “But it's a real mixed bag politically. I will just say the president boxed himself in here, because this is what happens when you don't make a public case for major military action. The president never asked for the support of the American people, for the support of Congress, for support from our allies. And so when things inevitably bog down, because we were only willing to do so much militarily for understandable political reasons, the president didn't have any allies and friends with skin in the game who were there to back up the policy and see it through. And that's part of why he ended up looking for a get out of jail free card here." - YouTubeyoutu.be

Reacting to remarks Donald Trump made at a press conference in France on Wednesday that he could easily start bombing Iran again just before signing a peace deal with the war-torn country, left MS NOW’s Mika Brzezinski baffled and appalled.MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” began with a clip of the president standing between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, with Trump remarking, “It's a memorandum of understanding. If it doesn't get done in 60 days, that's all right. We go back to bombing. You know, I don't want to do that because it's so good, but we might have to because we're never going to let them have a nuclear weapon. But they've agreed not to and you'll see that very clearly in the agreement.”That led the “Morning Joe” co-host to ask incredulously, “What, what, what? It's like, I'm going to give you a gift and I'll bomb you if you don't take the gift that I'm giving you?”“President Trump yesterday repeatedly threatening to bomb Iran if the country violated the memorandum of understanding, which has finally been released,” she elaborated. “The president is defending the deal amid widespread criticism here at home, with one Republican senator calling it ‘the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.’”“The agreement appears to give Iran everything it wants in exchange for opening up the Strait of Hormuz, which was wide open before Trump started the war in late February,” she continued. “While Trump tries to spin the terms of a big win, here are the key items: Iran gets its sanctions lifted, gets access to hundreds of billions of dollars in reconstruction funds, and can now sell its oil across the world. Tehran's nuclear program also stays at its status quo while negotiations continue for the next 60 days.”Addressing co-host Joe Scarborough, she blurted, “Joe, I am aghast.” "Aghast, aghast, aghast,” Scarborough offered before teasing her with, “This is the first time you're going to be upset at what's been going on over the past decade.”“A couple of things really that bear repeating for the uninitiated, and certainly for some people that are listening to what Donald Trump is saying right now, that, ‘Oh, they've agreed not to have a nuclear weapon,’” he continued. “This is the same position they have had for 50 years as the Wall Street Journal editorial page and everybody else will tell you it is the same exact position that they've had for 50 years. Secondly, why would Iran not take this deal, this memorandum of understanding is as [MS NOW’s] David Rohde is reporting, and we'll talk to him about it in a second, everybody else is reporting, this is a dream. They [Iran] can't believe they got what they got from Donald Trump.” - YouTube youtu.be

A former U.K. border official and a retired Hong Kong police officer have been sentenced for spying on dissidents in Britain