TDB Top 5 International Stories: Wednesday 7th December 2016

5: Donald and Ivanka Trump Met Al Gore to Chat About Climate Change

UPDATE: Al Gore also met with Donald Trump at Trump Tower on Monday despite previous reports that he wouldn’t. Gore reportedly called the meeting “lengthy and very productive.”

Ivanka Trump is meeting with former vice president and climate change activist Al Gore on Monday, Trump spokesman Jason Miller told CNN.

Miller didn’t elaborate about the directives of the meeting, only to say that it would be about climate issues. Ivanka really hasn’t talked much about her views on climate change in the past, but she reportedly got her hands on a copy of Leonardo DiCaprio’s Before the Flood doc, so there’s that.

Vice News

4: Syria’s army tightens grip on key Aleppo district

Syrian forces were on the verge of seizing a key rebel-held district of east Aleppo on Tuesday as Damascus and ally Moscow warned that rebels who failed to leave the city peacefully would be destroyed.

After retaking control of about two-thirds of opposition-held east Aleppo over the past week, forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad advanced on the large residential district of Shaar. With the capture of Shaar, the army would hold nearly 70 percent of east Aleppo, four years after rebels first seized it and divided the ancient city.

In Damascus, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried on the state SANA news agency that the government would not allow rebels a chance to “regroup and repeat their crimes” in Aleppo.

On Monday, Russia and China blocked a draft resolution at the UN Security Council demanding a seven-day truce in Aleppo to evacuate the sick and wounded, and to provide humanitarian aid workers time to get food and medicine in.

Aljazeera

 

3: From Climate Change to Nuclear War, Noam Chomsky Warns of Literal Threats to Our Survival

On Monday night, Democracy Now! celebrated its 20th anniversary at the historic Riverside Church in New York City. Among those who addressed more than 2,000 attendants was world-renowned linguistic Noam Chomsky, who spoke about the two most dangerous threats the human species faces today: the possibility of nuclear war and the accelerating destruction of human-fueled climate change.

Democracy Now

2: After 8 Years of Expanding Presidential War Powers, Obama Insists They Are Limited

Anticipating that Donald Trump might try to fulfill his promises to “bomb the shit” out of terror groups and do a “hell of a lot worse than waterboarding,” President Obama released a report on Monday summarizing his administration’s views of the legal barriers and policies limiting the president’s military power.

The 61-page report calls for trying terrorism suspects in civilian court and explains at length why no future president could legally torture detainees. It lays out the administration’s self-imposed limits on military operations — and declares that a 2001 resolution Congress passed in the wake of 9/11 is not a blank check to go to kill alleged terrorists wherever they are.

“It clearly reads like an explanation, a textbook that’s left for the next person,” said Naureen Shah, director of the Security With Human Rights Program at Amnesty International. “Here are all the things you cannot do.”

But in trying to defend Obama’s legacy, the report paints a picture of an administration far more restrained than it was in practice.

The Intercept

1: Angela Merkel endorses party’s call for partial ban on burqa and niqab

Angela Merkel has for the first time endorsed her party’s call for a partial ban on burqa and niqab in Germany, telling delegates at the Christian Democratic Union’s conference in Essen “the full facial veil is inappropriate and should be banned wherever it is legally possible”.

The German chancellor’s CDU party is expected this week to pass a motion proposing a ban on the full face veil in some areas of public life such as courts, schools and universities, as well as in road traffic and during police checks. A full ban on the facial veil, as introduced in France in 2011, is seen as incompatible with Germany’s basic laws.

The Guardian