Sunday News: Mexico rebukes Trump, Brexit update, WikiLeaks controversy, and Australian elections

By Robert A. Vella

Here are some important news stories for this last Sunday in November

From:  Mexico’s incoming government denies report Mexico supports Trump admin’s new asylum proposal

Mexico’s incoming government on Saturday night denied that an official deal had been made regarding migrants staying in the country before entering the United States, Mexico’s incoming interior secretary, Olga Sánchez Cordero, said according to a statement acquired by CNN.

The statement is at odds with a previous report by The Washington Post, which had claimed that the incoming Mexican government supported a Trump administration plan that would require individuals seeking asylum to remain south of the US border while their applications are being processed.

Earlier on Saturday, the Post reported that the new Trump administration border policy had garnered the incoming Mexican government’s support, citing Mexican officials and senior members of Mexican president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s transition team. The Post report included quotes from Sánchez Cordero that the incoming government had agreed to the policy.

In the statement Saturday night, Sánchez Cordero explained that the next administration does not have any plans to make Mexico a “third safe country” for migrants.

“Mexico’s next federal administration does not consider within its plans that Mexico assume the condition of “third secure country” for the attention of Central American migrants or citizens of other countries in Mexican territory or those who will have that intention in the future,” Sánchez Cordero said in the statement.

She added that the incoming administration will focus on ensuring the migrant caravans will receive help in accessing food, health, shelter and protection of their human rights.

The incoming administration will assume office December 1.

From:  U.K. and E.U. Leaders Cinch Brexit Divorce Terms

BRUSSELS — More than four decades after Britain tied itself to its Continental neighbors, Prime Minister Theresa May obtained the approval of the other 27 European Union members on a formal divorce pact from the bloc, Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, said on Sunday.

It is a consequential step intended to take the country on a new, if unclear, path.

EU27 has endorsed the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration on the future EU-UK relations.

— Donald Tusk (@eucopresident) November 25, 2018

The journey has been long and tortuous for both sides, and the drama is hardly over. Mrs. May must still get approval for the deal — a dense, legally binding divorce settlement and a set of political promises for Britain’s future relationship with the bloc — from an outspokenly unhappy British Parliament.

Since Britons voted in 2016 to leave the European Union, Mrs. May has struggled to define how closely they should remain tied to Continental Europe, ultimately choosing a kind of middle way that has left many dissatisfied.

See also:  May faces Brexit moment of truth in parliament

From:  The Radical Evolution of WikiLeaks

Now it looks as if the U.S. government is preparing its most direct action yet against Assange. On Thursday, an unrelated court filing referred to secret charges against Assange for unspecified crimes. Assange, who has been living in London’s Ecuadorean Embassy since 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden in connection to an unrelated, now-dropped investigation of rape allegations, had long voiced the fear that the U.S. would seek to charge and possibly extradite him if he ever left the compound.

The revelation put a new twist on the saga of an organization that, after becoming famous in 2010, became notorious in 2016 for its role in publishing hacked emails apparently obtained by Russian intelligence in an effort to sway the U.S. presidential election. Today the WikiLeaks story isn’t just about the line between transparency and security, but about where the mere act of releasing information becomes information warfare.

[…]

In retrospect, the moment suggested that WikiLeaks was changing. “WikiLeaks used to seem a lot simpler,” said Clint Hendler, a senior editor at Mother Jones who reported extensively on WikiLeaks in its early days for Columbia Journalism Review. “It used to seem to … be something pretty close to what its outward rhetoric was”—that is, a mere clearinghouse for secret documents.

From:  Australia’s embattled government suffers state vote ‘bloodbath’

Australia’s embattled minority government has suffered a further blow after a big loss in a crucial state poll ahead of national elections next year.

The Labor government for Victoria, Australia’s second-most populous state, was returned to power in a landslide after elections on Saturday.

Provisional results collated by national broadcaster ABC pointed to a 4.8 percent swing to Labor, and for the left-leaning party to hold 55 seats in the 88-seat state assembly — a result one minister described as a “bloodbath”.

[…]

The conservative coalition has to call national elections by mid-May next year, with the Wentworth and Victoria losses pointing to a possible crushing defeat against the main opposition party Labor.