U.S. President Donald Trump downplayed a new round of North Korean missile tests early Friday, five months after his last denuclearization talk with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and with pressure building to iron out a deal.

“These missiles tests are not a violation of our signed Singapore agreement,” he wrote on Twitter, later acknowledging that the missile tests could have violated United Nations resolutions. The two men met in Singapore in June of last year.

Kim Jong Un and North Korea tested 3 short range missiles over the last number of days. These missiles tests are not a violation of our signed Singapore agreement, nor was there discussion of short range missiles when we shook hands. There may be a United Nations violation, but..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 2, 2019

U.S. officials said earlier that Kim personally promised Trump not to conduct longer-range missile or nuclear tests.

“Chairman Kim does not want to disappoint me with a violation of trust,” the president wrote. “There is far too much for North Korea to gain … [and] there is far too much to lose.”

The North launched two projectiles around 3 a.m. local time from South Hamgyong province, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. The projectiles traveled an estimated 220 kilometers, reaching an altitude of 25 kilometers, it later added. It was the third such launch in just over a week.

With Latest Launches, North Korea Perfecting ‘Scary Impressive’ Missile

Pyongyang has launched seven ballistic missiles in three months

U.S. and South Korean intelligence officials assess the projectile as likely a “short-range ballistic missile” that shares flight characteristics with other recent North Korean launches, South Korea’s presidential Blue House said in a statement to reporters.

The Friday launch was first reported by U.S. officials, who said the move did not appear to threaten North America.

North Korea has test-fired at least six short-range weapons in just over a week, in an apparent attempt to increase leverage over the United States ahead of possible nuclear talks.

Last week’s launch involved North Korea’s version of a Russian Iskander ballistic missile, which appears specially designed to evade U.S. and South Korean missile defenses.

On Wednesday, North Korea tested what it called a “newly developed large-caliber, multiple launch, guided rocket system.” U.S. and South Korean intelligence officials say they see the test as a violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions that ban North Korea from any ballistic missile activity.

“We are concerned by the launches of ballistic missiles by North Korea in the past few days,” said Karen Pierce, Britain’s permanent representative to the United Nations, following a closed-door Security Council meeting to discuss the matter Thursday.

“We reiterate our condemnation of such launches, which are violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions,” said Pierce, who spoke on behalf of Britain, France and Germany.

That statement is a strong contrast to Trump’s acknowledgement that “there may be a United Nations violation,” which lacked a strong denunciation.

After a missile launch Wednesday, U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric described the launches as “just another reminder of the importance of restarting talks on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

Trump’s approach may be aimed at deescalating tensions and encouraging communication between the U.S. and North Korea. Talks have been stalled since a February Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi ended without a deal.

Kim in 2018 declared a self-imposed moratorium on intercontinental ballistic missile and nuclear tests, but that promise hasn’t been included in any public documents that have come out of Trump and Kim’s three meetings.

At the end of June, Trump and Kim met at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas. White House officials described the meeting as a breakthrough, saying North Korea had agreed to resume working-level talks.

Since then, North Korea has gradually ramped up its threats and provocations, saying it may not engage in talks if the U.S. and South Korea go ahead with planned joint military exercises.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in Thailand for a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), said he remains willing to talk with North Korean officials but that a meeting in Bangkok is unlikely.

“We stand ready to continue our diplomatic conversation with the North Koreans,” Pompeo said Thursday. “I regret that it looks like I’m not going to have an opportunity to do that while I’m here … but we’re ready to go.”

As the Trump administration reassures North Korea of its intention to negotiate, U.S. lawmakers are expressing more skepticism about Trump’s approach to the country.

“The Trump administration should recognize that every new missile launch by North Korea is yet another play from the same old Kim family playbook,” Senator Edward Markey, ranking member of the East Asia Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement.

“Not only has President Trump failed to codify in writing a nuclear and missile testing freeze, but when he says he has ‘no problem’ with shorter range missile launches, he gives North Korea a green light to violate U.N. Security Council resolutions and threaten our allies,” Markey said.

…

President Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday removed several members of a commission investigating disappearances and murders during Brazil’s dictatorship, acting days after they confronted him on the role played by the state in the killing of a leftist activist.

A decree co-signed by Bolsonaro’s human rights minister and published in official records announced the replacement of four of the commission’s seven members, including its president, Eugenia Augusta Gonzaga.

Bolsonaro has faced intense criticism, including from allies, this week after he questioned the circumstances in which Fernando Santa Cruz, a leftist activist during the 1964-1985 military regime and father of the current president of the Brazilian Bar Association, was slain.

On July 24, the commission published an official obituary for Santa Cruz. It stipulates that his death in 1974 was “violent, caused by the Brazilian State, in the context of the systematic and generalized persecution” of political activists during the dictatorship.

A few days later, without providing evidence, Bolsonaro said while getting a haircut that Santa Cruz had been killed by a “terrorist group,” Acao Popular. Bolsonaro told journalists that if the president of the Brazilian Bar Association wanted to know how his father died: “I’ll tell him.”

Bolsonaro, a far-right former army captain, has often praised the military regime and minimized abuses committed by that regime.

In 2016, when voting to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, who was a victim of torture by the military regime, Bolsonaro dedicated his vote to a colonel who led a torture unit. “In memory of Col. Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, the terror of Dilma Rousseff, I vote yes,” said the then-lawmaker.

After being elected president last Oct. 28, Bolsonaro named several ex-generals to his Cabinet. He also called for the commemoration of the anniversary of Brazil’s 1964 military coup, leading federal prosecutors to condemn an “apology for the practice of atrocities.”

In 2014, Brazil’s national truth commission concluded that at least 434 people were killed or disappeared during the dictatorship. It is estimated that between 30,000 and 50,000 people were illegally arrested and tortured. Bolsonaro called the report “unfounded.”

Changing times

To justify the changes made Thursday at the commission, Bolsonaro said times are changing in Brazil.

“The motive [is that the] president has changed, now it is Jair Bolsonaro, of the right,” he told reporters. “When they put terrorists there, nobody said anything.”

Bolsonaro and human rights minister Damares Alves appointed Marco Vinicius de Carvalho, one of Alves’ top advisers, as the commission’s new leader. The decree gave seats on the body to a member of the Ministry of Defense, which already had a seat on the commission, and a former army colonel.

At a news conference in Sao Paulo following her dismissal as the body’s president, Gonzaga described Bolsonaro’s mocking of official documents around the death of Santa Cruz “cruel.”

She said members of the commission had been expecting to be replaced since the election for their “prominent role in defending” victims of the dictatorship.

“For us, this destitution was a response to our manifestations, defending the rights of the Santa Cruz family and others,” Gonzaga said.

‘Nonpartisan’ commission

She also insisted that the commission, which began in 1995, is not a government body, like ministries, which change with each new government.

“The commission has always been nonpartisan, always including people who have some connections with this theme, and they are not paid,” she told a crowd of journalists and families of victims of the dictatorship.

Felipe Santa Cruz, son of Fernando Santa Cruz, filed a complaint Wednesday to Brazil’s top court about the president’s comment on the case. Santa Cruz, who was 2 when his father went missing, wrote that Bolsonaro’s comments showed “cruelty and a lack of empathy.”

According to the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, supreme court Justice Luis Roberto Barroso gave Bolsonaro 15 days to clarify his statements about Santa Cruz. The supreme court was not immediately available to confirm.

…

Islamic State (IS) militants killed four security officials late Wednesday near the northern city of Kirkuk, local officials said.

The attack, which was carried out on a checkpoint manned by local Kurdish security forces, also left at least eight people wounded, local sources said.

“At least 15 IS militants, including a couple snipers, were involved in the overnight raid,” a senior Iraqi security official told VOA.

The Iraqi official, who refused to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to reporters, added that the militants used mortars in the Wednesday attack.

In the nearby province of Saladin, at least five Iraqi soldiers and government-backed militia members were killed in an IS attack on their positions, Iraqi police reported Thursday.

IS has not yet claimed responsibility for either attack.

In response to Wednesday’s attacks, Iraqi warplanes carried out an airstrike on an IS position, killing at least three militants, an Iraqi security official said.

Increased attacks

IS has increased its attacks in recent weeks against Iraqi and Kurdish forces in parts of northern Iraq that were held by the terror group before they were freed with the help of the U.S.-led coalition.

A VOA reporter in Iraq said one of the targeted areas has largely been safe until recently, with IS increasingly carrying out surprise attacks against civilians and security forces in places like Kirkuk, Diyala and Mosul.

Mosul was considered the de facto capital of IS in Iraq. Supported by U.S. airpower, Iraqi troops liberated the country’s second-largest city from IS in July 2017. The terror group was officially declared defeated in Iraq in December 2017.

Since then, however, remnants of IS have frequently targeted vital parts of the region.

During the harvest season this year, IS also set fire to thousands of acres of wheat fields across northern and western Iraq, inflicting substantial damage on the local economy, reports said.

IS militants have also attempted attacks on oilfields in northern Iraq. Last week, Iraqi forces foiled two major attacks claimed by IS on the strategic Olas and Ajil oilfields in Saladin province, the Iraqi military said.

Cells across northern Iraq

The extremist group has active cells across areas in northern Iraq considered disputed between the central Iraqi government and Kurdistan regional government, according to Iraqi officials.

IS “was territorially defeated, but the context for their [re-emergence] in disputed territories is permissive. Terror is [a] continuous threat,” Hemin Hawrami, deputy speaker of Iraqi Kurdistan’s regional parliament, said in a tweet Thursday.

U.S. officials also have warned that IS’s ongoing activities pose a threat to Iraq’s stability.

“After the defeat of ISIS in Mosul, Iraq didn’t have an ISIS terrain-holding threat,” James Jeffrey, special envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat IS, told reporters at the State Department on Thursday, using another acronym for IS.

“But what we have seen is a persistent, resilient, rural, terrorist level of violence generated by these underground cells of ISIS, particularly in areas from south of Mosul and the Kurdish areas down to Baghdad,” he said.

…

Saudi Arabia has issued new laws that grant women greater freedoms by allowing any citizen to apply for a passport and travel freely, ending a long-standing and controversial guardianship policy that had required male consent for a woman to travel or carry a passport.

The changes approved by King Salman and his Cabinet allow any person 21 and older to travel abroad without prior consent and any citizen to apply for a Saudi passport on their own.

The decrees were published early Friday in the kingdom’s official weekly gazette.

Other changes issued in the decrees allow women to register a marriage, divorce or child’s birth and to be issued official family documents.

The changes were widely celebrated by Saudis on Twitter, but also drew criticism from some conservatives.
 

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The Pentagon has decided to put on hold its decision to award a $10 billion cloud computing contract after President Donald Trump said his administration was examining Amazon.com Inc’s bid following complaints from other tech companies.

The contract, called the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure Cloud, or JEDI, is part of a broad modernization of the Pentagon’s information technology systems.

Oracle Corp lobbied aggressively and expressed concerns about the award process for the contract, including asking about the role of a former Amazon employee who worked on the project at the Defense Department but then recused himself, then later left the Defense Department and returned to Amazon Web Services.

Oracle and IBM Corp have since been eliminated from the competition, leaving Amazon and Microsoft Corp as finalists.

Pentagon spokeswoman Elissa Smith said Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who assumed his role on July 23, was reviewing accusations of unfairness.

“Keeping his promise to Members of Congress and the American public, Secretary Esper is looking at the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) program,” Smith said in a statement Thursday. “No decision will be made on the program until he has completed his examination.”

Amazon Web Services and Oracle did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The decision delays the award of the contract, which the Pentagon had hoped would occur in August. Trump has had a contentious relationship with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, which Trump has accused of unfair coverage.

Last month, four Republican lawmakers, including Mac Thornberry, his party’s senior member on the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to Trump urging him to move forward with the contract.  

…

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA — Colombia is looking into dozens of signs with threatening messages about Venezuelan migrants that were posted in the northeastern city of Bucaramanga and that bear the name of a crime gang, authorities said.

More than 1.4 million Venezuelans have migrated to Colombia in recent years, fleeing shortages of food and medicine and political upheaval.

“The time has come for a cleansing of all Bucaramanga. Homeless people and thieves, who generally are Venezuelans, will hit the floor, as will those who take them in,” said the signs, many of which are attached to trees.

“Those who have Venezuelan employees have 48 hours to replace them,” the posters, signed by the Aguilas Negras crime gang, added.

The Aguilas Negras are a drug trafficking group largely composed of former right-wing paramilitary fighters. They are well-known for threatening social cleansing against marginalized groups in areas where they are active.

Some 38,000 Venezuelans live in Bucaramanga, according to figures from Colombia’s migration agency.

Colombia’s vice president, Marta Lucia Ramirez, said the country would adopt security measures to protect migrants from potential xenophobic attacks.

“Any threat to the lives of the Venezuelan or Colombian-Venezuelan population that has come to Colombia is a crime and there will be judicial and criminal consequences for those responsible for these pamphlets,” Ramirez told journalists.

In a statement late on Wednesday, Colombia’s migration agency rejected the threats and said it would meet with local authorities to review the situation.

The migrant influx has put pressure on Colombia’s already overburdened health and education systems. It is common to see desperate Venezuelan migrants begging for coins or selling items on street corners across the country.

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Divers and environmentalists found an unpleasant surprise in Aegean waters near Greece and are working to fix it.  What looked like colorful coral turned out to be a plastic wasteland, just one of many challenges delicate marine ecosystems face. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi dives in for a look.

…

The prospect of Britain crashing out of the European Union with no deal at the end of October is creating a tumultuous first few weeks in office for Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The British pound sterling is plunging, and there are warnings of widespread disruption. As Henry Ridgwell reports from London, Johnson is looking for help across the Atlantic to a like-minded ally in the White House.
 

…

The second night of the second round of Democratic presidential candidate debates took place in Detroit Wednesday. The candidates answered questions on a range of issues, including health care, immigration, crime and race.

Here are quotes from each candidate:

Michael Bennet, on the connection between education and the criminal justice system, saying: “Let’s fix our school system, and then maybe we can fix the prison pipeline.”

Joe Biden, in his closing statement, said: “Everybody knows who Donald Trump is, we have to let him know who we are. We choose science over fiction. We choose hope over fear. We choose unity over division. And we choose the idea that we can as Americans — when we act together — we can do anything.”

Cory Booker, during a heated argument about criminal justice with Biden, said: “Mr. Vice President has said that since the 1970s, every crime bill, major and minor, has had his name on it. And sir, those are your words, not mine, and this is one of those instances where the house was set on fire and you claimed responsibility for those laws. And you can’t just now come out with a plan to put out that fire.”

Bill de Blasio, in explaining why voters should vote for him, said: “If we’re going to beat Donald Trump, this has to be a party that stands for something. The party of labor unions. This has to be the party of universal health care. This has to be the party that’s not afraid to say out loud we’re going to tax the hell out of the wealthy. And when we do that, Donald Trump right on cue will call us socialists. Here’s what I’ll say to him: ‘Donald, you’re the real socialist.'”

Julian Castro, on security at the southern U.S. border with Mexico, said: “My immigration plan would also make sure that we put undocumented immigrants, who haven’t committed a serious crime, on a pathway to citizenship. That we do a 21st century Marshall Plan, with Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, so that we can get to the root of this challenge, so people can find safety and opportunity at home, instead of having to come to the United States.”

Tulsi Gabbard, in criticizing the U.S foreign policy establishment, said: “For too long, we had leaders who have been arbitrating foreign policy from ivory towers in Washington without any idea about the cost and the consequence, the toll it takes on our service members, on their families. We have to do the right thing. End the wasteful regime change wars and bring our troops home. … We were all lied to (about Iraq). The problem is that this current president is continuing to betray us.”

Kirsten Gillibrand, in saying the discussion about race shouldn’t fall on Booker or Senator Kamala Harris, said: “I don’t believe it’s the responsibility of Cory and Kamala to take this on. I think as a white woman running for president of the United States, it is my responsibility to lift up those voices that aren’t being listened to. … I can talk to those white women in the suburbs and explain to them what white privilege is. When their son is walking down a street with a bag of M&M’s in his pocket wearing a hoodie, his whiteness is what protects him from not being shot.”

Kamala Harris, in a discussion about equal pay for women, said: “Women are paid 80 cents on the dollar. Black women: $0.61. Native American women: $0.58. Latinas: $0.53. … Since 1963, when we passed the Equal Pay Act, we have been talking about the fact that women are not paid equally for equal work. … I’m done with the conversation. Under my plan, companies will be fined if they’re not paying men and women equally.”

Jay Inslee, who is running on a platform of addressing climate change, said: “Under Donald Trump, we face a looming catastrophe, but it is not too late, we have one last chance. The survival of humanity on this planet and civilization as we know it is in the hands of the next president.”

Andrew Yang, in saying robots have displaced more workers than immigrants, said: “If you go to a factory here in Michigan, you will not find wall-to-wall immigrants, you will find wall-to-wall robots and machines. Immigrants are being scapegoated for issues they have nothing to do with in our economy.” 

…

Nearly half the House Democrats now support an impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump — a milestone but still probably not enough to push Speaker Nancy Pelosi to launch proceedings.

A tally by The Associated Press on Wednesday showed 114 Democrats in the House, and one Republican-turned independent, are now publicly backing an inquiry, a notable spike in the days since special counsel Robert Mueller testified on Capitol Hill. Some two dozen House Democrats, and two top senators, added their names after Mueller’s public appearance last week.

The numbers also show the limits. Even with half the Democrats favoring impeachment efforts, it’s not seen by leadership as a working majority for quick action. Pelosi, who needs at least a 218-vote majority to pass most legislation in the House, has been unwilling to move toward impeachment without a groundswell of support — both on and off Capitol Hill.

“The dynamics have shifted,” said Kevin Mack, the lead strategist at Need to Impeach, a group funded by Tom Steyer, who’s now a Democratic presidential contender and stepped down from the organization. “It’s time to get it started. It’s not enough to keep kicking the can down the road, running out the clock.”

For Democrats who won control of the House, partly on the promise of providing a checks-and-balance on the Trump administration, the weeks ahead will be pivotal as lawmakers hear from voters during the August recess and attention turns toward the 2020 election.

Outside groups have struggled to make inroads with the House, despite tens of thousands of phone calls and office visits pushing lawmakers to act more urgently. Steyer’s group and another founded by activist Sean Eldridge have been key advocates for impeachment. But it’s taken longer than expected to reach this benchmark, some say. Their work may become more daunting ahead of the primary elections if Democrats are reluctant to take greater strides toward impeachment.

Still, what’s striking about the growing list of House Democrats who support some sort of impeachment inquiry is as much the names as the numbers.

This week, Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, became the ninth to call for impeachment inquiry — almost half of the House’s committee chairmen now on record in favor.

Engel said the president’s “repeated abuses have brought American democracy to a perilous crossroads.” His committee is among those investigating Trump’s business dealings and ties to Russia – and running into obstruction by the administration that some say are grounds for impeachment.

Also joining the list in the immediate aftermath of Mueller’s testimony was a top party leader, Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., the vice chair of the Democratic caucus, who said the House has been met with “unprecedented stonewalling and obstruction” by the Trump administration.

“That is why I believe we need to open an impeachment inquiry that will provide us a more formal way to fully uncover the facts,” she said.

Two top Democratic senators, Patty Murray of Washington and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, the third and fourth-ranking members of leadership, also announced their support for a House impeachment inquiry.

Republican-turned independent Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan announced his support for impeachment shortly after he said he read Mueller’s findings about Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Trump administration’s response.

Mueller’s testimony was supposed to be a game changer, his appearance months in the making since the April release of his 448-page report. But the 74-year-old Mueller’s halting testimony and one-word answers left a mixed result.

Pelosi swiftly assembled lawmakers behind closed doors the evening after Mueller testified. The speaker has held Democrats in line on her strategy, with many deferring to her leadership. 

Pelosi’s only counsel was that if they needed to speak in favor of impeachment, they should not to turn it into a moral ultimatum. It was a signal that Democrats should not badmouth lawmakers who were still reluctant to call for an inquiry, according a person familiar with the private session and granted anonymity to discuss it.

While the speaker called Mueller’s appearance “a crossing of a threshold,” she also quickly pivoted to the House’s legal action against the White House, saying Democrats are building the case that Trump is obstructing their ability to conduct oversight of the executive branch.

“We still have some outstanding matters in the courts,” Pelosi said. She reminded that the Watergate case burst open after the House sued for access to audio tapes Richard Nixon made in the White House.

“We want to have the strongest possible case to make a decision as to what path we will go down and that is not endless, in terms of time, or endless in terms of the information that we want,” she said.

Still no lawsuit

Yet the House Judiciary Committee has yet to file a lawsuit on one of their next priorities — enforcing a subpoena against Donald McGahn. That filing could come as soon as this week, but the process could take several months, pushing the impeachment timeline closer to the end of the year and the presidential primaries.

The former White House counsel is among long list of administration officials who have refused to testify or provide documents to the panel under orders from Trump. The suit would challenge White House claims that such officials have “absolute immunity” from such testimony.

In a separate case, the committee is in court trying to obtain secret grand jury information underlying Mueller’s report. In a court filing Wednesday, the committee and the Justice Department agreed to next steps in that matter by the end of September, pushing any resolution until October.

Pelosi is of the mindset that impeachment should not be done for political reasons, or not done for political reasons, as she pursues a step-by-step case. In many ways, she is protecting those lawmakers who joined the House from districts Trump creating the House majority, from having to make tough choices on impeachment. But critics say Pelosi is depriving Democrats of a clear vote on impeachment, and they say that decision will leave voters deflated for the 2020 election.

The group Stand Up America, which is part of a coalition with MoveOn, Indivisible and other advocates of impeachment, believes the August recess will be a critical moment to convince lawmakers to go on the record.

“If lawmakers in Congress haven’t felt the pressure to start an impeachment inquiry, they haven’t been listening,” said Eldridge, the group’s founder and president, in a statement. “During the August recess we will ensure that every member of Congress hears from their constituents on why it’s the only path forward.”

…

New homes are going up fastest in high-flood-risk areas in many U.S. coastal states, scientists said Wednesday, despite increasing awareness that global warming has made living in such areas even more risky.

Science and communication nonprofit Climate Central found that one-third of coastline states that will run a 10% risk of ocean inundation each year by 2050 saw new housing sprouting at rates higher than on safer ground. 

“The attraction of living by the water is obvious,” said Ben Strauss, a climate scientist at Climate Central who led the research, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. 

In the northeastern state of Connecticut from 2010 to 2017, housing valued at $880 million went up more than three times faster in high-flood-risk zones than on safer ground. 

Another East Coast state, New Jersey, outpaced all other states at building homes in high-risk zones, with about 4,500 new homes worth $4.6 billion erected in such areas from 2010 to 2017, the researchers reported. 

No law against it

U.S. law does not bar building in areas predicted to flood every 100 years, as long as risk reduction regulations are adhered to and owners purchase flood insurance. 

About 5% of the U.S. population lived in these areas in 2015, a 2017 report by New York University’s Furman Center found. 

The researchers focused on areas at higher risk for flooding — defined as every 10 years by 2050 — to provide practical input for homeowners seeking mortgages, Strauss said. 

“You can buy a property that has never or rarely flooded today, but by the end of the mortgage could be flooding every few years because of sea-level rise,” he noted. 

Intermittent floods

Such intermittent floods can damage and devalue homes, degrade infrastructure, rust out cars and spawn mold, the report said.

Other states where new home construction in high-danger zones versus safer areas included Rhode Island, Delaware, Maine, Mississippi, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

The report obtained data on housing location and value from real estate database company Zillow.

The scientists drew their conclusions by combining flood and sea-level rise projections that followed a scenario where planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions are cut moderately, the report said.

Carlos Martin, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, a Washington-based think tank, found much of the report “disheartening”.

Martin said the findings showed the need to boost incentives, such as existing government programs to buy out homeowners in flood-prone areas, to encourage people to live further from the coastline.

…

The latest round of trade talks between U.S. and Chinese negotiators ended in Shanghai Wednesday with an agreement to meet again in September in the U.S.

Although neither side immediately commented on the talks, China’s official Xinhua news agency reported the talks were “frank, highly efficient and constructive.”

The news agency also reported negotiators discussed “the issue of China increasing its purchases of U.S. agricultural products, according to its domestic needs.”

U.S. and Chinese representatives held talks at a working dinner on Tuesday and less than a half day of negotiations on Wednesday before the U.S. delegation headed straight to the airport.

Shortly after U.S. negotiators arrived in Shanghai on Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump warned China against negotiating a deal after the 2020 U.S. presidential election  — declaring a delayed agreement would be less attractive than a deal reached in the near term.

“The problem with them waiting … is that if & when I win, the deal that they get will be much tougher than what we are negotiating now … or no deal at all,” Trump said in a post on Twitter.

…to ripoff the USA, even bigger and better than ever before. The problem with them waiting, however, is that if & when I win, the deal that they get will be much tougher than what we are negotiating now…or no deal at all. We have all the cards, our past leaders never got it!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 30, 2019

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying responded to Trump’s tweet on Wednesday, telling reporters at a daily news briefing in Beijing “it doesn’t make any sense for the U.S. to exercise its campiagn of maximum pressure at this time.”

Hua also said “It’s pointless to tell others to take medication when you’re the one who sick.”

U.S. and Chinese officials gathered in Shanghai in an attempt to revive talks, with both sides trying to temper expectations for a breakthrough.

The world’s two largest economies are engaged in an intense trade war that has dragged on for more than a year, having imposed punitive tariffs on each other totaling more than $360 billion in two-way trade.

The Shanghai negotiations came after Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed at June’s G-20 summit to resurrect efforts to end the costly trade war over China’s technology ambitions and trade surplus.

China is resisting U.S. demands to abolish government-led plans for industrial leaders to enhance robotics, artificial intelligence and other technologies.

The U.S. has complained China’s plans depend on the acquisition of foreign technology through theft or coercion.

Days prior to the Shanghai meeting, Trump threatened to withdraw recognition of China’s developing nation’s status at the World Trade Organization. China responded by saying the threat is indicative of the “arrogance and selfishness” of the U.S.

The U.S. delegation in Shanghai was represented by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. They met with a Chinese delegation led by Vice Premier Liu He, who serves as the country’s economic czar.

…