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 Hong Kong, Dec. 24.– China’s media recently reported that the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) would conduct a study into Cambodia’s participation in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). If it had been just China conducting this study, there would be little interest in the topic. It is a foregone conclusion that Cambodia’s ruthless oligarchic regime is already a subsidiary of China. As testimony, the country’s seaside province of Sihanoukville now resembles China’s Macau.

China’s media recently reported that the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) would conduct a study into Cambodia’s participation in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). If it had been just China conducting this study, there would be little interest in the topic. It is a foregone conclusion that Cambodia’s ruthless oligarchic regime is already a subsidiary of China. As testimony, the country’s seaside province of Sihanoukville now resembles China’s Macau.

The Senate had approved the bill on Tuesday, Dec. 18.

Congress approved a sweeping bipartisan criminal justice reform bill on Thursday, handing President Trump a major legislative victory on an issue championed by his White House. The House approved the bill 358-36, sending it to Trump's desk for his signature. The legislation was approved earlier this week by the Senate, 87-12."

Washington DC, Dec.20 (AP).– The House passed an extensive criminal justice bill on Thursday that will reduce some of the harshest sentences for federal drug offenders and boost prison rehabilitation programs.

“Congress just passed the
Criminal Justice Reform Bill
known as the #FirstStepAct.
Congratulations!
This is a great bi-partisan achievement
for everybody.  When both parties work together
we can keep our Country safer.
A wonderful thing for the U.S.A.!!”.– Trump tweeted.

Africa 2018 Forum discussed developing continent’s infrastructure, creating new job opportunities.

 Sharm El-Sheikh, Dec. 10.– President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi said Egypt will continue to exert efforts in order to ensure a brighter future for Africa, stressing that the Africa 2018 Forum was a great opportunity to prove Egypt’s desire to protect African interests. The president issued a number of decisions which aim to achieve economic integration in Africa, including the establishment of new funds and measures to facilitate African investment in Egypt.

During his closing speech at the third African Forum on Sunday in Sharm El-Sheikh, Al-Sisi pointed out that the forum allowed for the exchange of viewpoints and ideas about optimum ways to develop Africa, especially its infrastructure as well as creating new job opportunities.

The hundreds of published pages from the Special Counsel’s office and the House intelligence committee read like a Le Carré novel.  

Washington DC, Dec.8.– The Mueller investigation has been running for 81 weeks and counting. For much of that time it has offered those yet to get over the 2016 election a chance to fantasise about an alternative ending to the Trump presidency, one in which the good guys get the bad guys and justice is served. The market for this is so strong that there is even a podcast dedicated to investigation speculation, called “Mueller, she wrote”. Lawfare, a wonky legal blog, has become so popular that it has a merchandise section selling Lawfare-branded babygrows.

Yet the investigation is widely misunderstood. Many Americans seem to be waiting for a final report from Robert Mueller’s team, at which point something will happen. Both those assumptions are wrong. The report, when it eventually comes, will probably not be made public. And the judgment on what that report means for the president will be political, rather than legal. It will rest on the views of Republicans in Congress. And many of them would rather not think about it.

Interviews with Republican congressmen, staffers and strategists in the wake of the most recent guilty plea from Michael Cohen, the president’s former lawyer and fixer, suggest few have paid it much attention. “I don’t think our members of Congress give a shit about Don Junior, the president’s family, people around the president,” says one. Another likens the party’s situation to the fable of the frog: the water is hotter, but colleagues have adjusted to it. Some quietly calculate that their political futures depend on publicly supporting a president whom they deplore.

Yet the widespread indifference in one party does not mean the special counsel’s investigation is inconsequential. Its seven guilty pleas or convictions are real enough. What has already been revealed, in the hundreds of pages of documents published by the special counsel’s office and the report by the House intelligence committee, is startling. These documents contain a cast of characters that seem drawn from a novel by Eric Ambler or John le Carré ...

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