Three EU countries have denied reaching any final agreement with Germany on the return of migrants to the country of entry, despite Angela Merkel's claim she'd received "political consent" from 14 EU nations to strike such a deal.

"No such deal has been reached," spokesman for Hungary's government Zoltan Kovacs said, adding that Budapest has repeatedly rejected German attempts to "return" migrants to their first country of entry into the EU. Similar statements have been produced by Poland and the Czech Republic, which also denied reaching any agreements on the matter.

"There are no any new agreements regarding the reception of asylum seekers from EU countries, we confirm (that), like the Czech Republic and Hungary," Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Artur Lompart said.

Global Affairs Canada made the following announcement on behalf of the Government of Canada:

Statement

June 29, 2018 - Ottawa, Ontario - Global Affairs Canada

Global Affairs Canada today released the following statement regarding the ongoing situation in southwest Syria:

"Canada is gravely concerned by the Syrian regime's offensive in southwest Syria and unequivocally condemns attacks on civilians, including airstrikes on hospitals.

"The regime's actions and those of its ally—Russia—are having a catastrophic impact on civilians, including the displacement of tens of thousands of people.

"Canada calls on the Syrian regime to immediately end the violence and to allow for rapid and unimpeded humanitarian access, and urges all parties to the conflict to respect their obligations under international humanitarian law. Canada also calls on Russia to uphold the commitments it made to help maintain a de-escalation zone in the area.

"Canada continues to pursue accountability for those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Syria.

"We will also continue to provide humanitarian assistance for the most vulnerable people of Syria.''

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is the Hague-based enforcement body for the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and has been operating since 1997. It has 193 UN states as members. Its mission is to oversee global compliance with the convention, which prohibits the use of chemical weapons (CW) and requires their destruction. The inspectors have the power to say whether chemical weapons have been used following a fact-finding visit. Until the watchdog's recent conference, they had not been authorized to identify the group or country suspected of deploying such weapons in any specific incident. The West used pressure to change that.

The UN has launched an almighty investigation into the Conservative government, the Guardian has revealed. The UN's special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Prof Philip Alston, will lead an inquiry on the impact of the government's austerity policies over the last eight years.

A previous UN inquiry looked at the government's treatment of disabled people. The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) concluded that the Conservatives had created a "human catastrophe" in the UK.

But the new inquiry will be much more wide-ranging. Given the shocking levels of poverty, homelessness and the dire human rights situation in Britain, it seems unlikely the investigation will yield positive results.

Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at NYU and Princeton, and John Batchelor continue their (usually) weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War.

Discussing the apparent decision to hold a prepared Trump-Putin meeting in July, Cohen points out there have been dozens of such US-Soviet/Russian top leadership events since the precedent was set by FDR and Stalin in 1943, during World War II. That was a meeting of allies, and included Winston Churchill. After the war, all the rest have been between the two Cold War "superpower" rivals or purportedly post-Cold War leaders. Every American president after FDR participated in at least one summit with his Soviet or Russian counterpart, and some presidents in multiple ones, including Eisenhower with Khrushchev, Reagan and George H.W. Bush with Gorbachev, and Clinton with Yeltsin.

If "summits" with large agendas and all of their political and media rituals are distinguished from occasional meetings on the "sidelines" of other events, the former have usually had several purposes: to solidify a mutual national-security partnership between the two leaders, typically on behalf of improving relations, or what became known as détente; to enhance both leaders' political standing at home and in the world; to send a message to their respective elites and bureaucracies that obstructing, let alone sabotaging, the leader's détente policy will no longer be tolerated; and by way of announced agreements and positive media coverage to broaden domestic elite and popular support for détente. Summit agendas have varied over the decades, some shaped by ongoing regional or other issues, but one item has been constant from Eisenhower and Khrushchev in the 1950s to Obama and then-Russian President Medvedev in 2009: managing and reducing existential dangers inherent in the "nuclear superpower arms race."

Senate Democrats joined Republicans this week to approve a massive expansion of the US military as demanded by President Donald Trump. Congressional action on the near-record Pentagon budget is taking place behind a veil of silence, with no public discussion and virtually no media coverage.

Even as the Trump administration steamrolls ahead with plans to gut social spending, winning a House vote Thursday to slash $23 billion from food stamp spending and advancing a scheme to consolidate the departments of Labor and Education in the name of "cutting costs", both houses of Congress have approved a bill that expands military spending at the fastest rate since the highpoint of the war in Iraq.

The so-called "John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019", which passed the Senate 85-10 Monday after having been approved by the House of Representatives in May, allocates $716 billion for the Defense Department, an increase of $82 billion.

The U.S. was in talks for a deal with Julian Assange but then FBI Director James Comey ordered an end to negotiations after Assange offered to prove Russia was not involved in the DNC leak, as Ray McGovern explains.

An explosive report by investigative journalist John Solomon on the opinion page of Monday's edition of The Hill sheds a bright light on how Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) and then-FBI Director James Comey collaborated to prevent WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange from discussing "technical evidence ruling out certain parties [read Russia]" in the controversial leak of Democratic Party emails to WikiLeaks during the 2016 election.

A deal that was being discussed last year between Assange and U.S. government officials would have given Assange "limited immunity" to allow him to leave the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he has been exiled for six years. In exchange, Assange would agree to limit through redactions "some classified CIA information he might release in the future," according to Solomon, who cited "interviews and a trove of internal DOJ documents turned over to Senate investigators." Solomon even provided a copy of the draft immunity deal with Assange.

But Comey's intervention to stop the negotiations with Assange ultimately ruined the deal, Solomon says, quoting "multiple sources." With the prospective agreement thrown into serious doubt, Assange "unleashed a series of leaks that U.S. officials say damaged their cyber warfare capabilities for a long time to come." These were the Vault 7 releases, which led then CIA Director Mike Pompeo to call WikiLeaks "a hostile intelligence service."

So you still believe Bernie Sanders (the 2016 presidential candidate) is an anti-establishment/anti-war politician?

1. He voted in favor of use of force (euphemism for bombing) in 12 sovereign nations that never represented a threat to the U.S.:

Afghanistan - Lebanon - Libya - Palestine - Somalia - Syria
Yemen - Yugoslavia - Haiti - Liberia - Zaire (Congo) - Sudan

2. He has accepted campaign money from Defense contractor Raytheon. He continues his undying support of the $1.5 trillion F-35 industry and said that predator drones "have done some very good things". Sanders has always voted in favor of awarding more corporate welfare for the military industrial complex - and even if he says he's against a particular war he ends up voting in favor of funding it.

3. He routinely backs appropriations for imperial wars, the corporate scam of Obamacare, wholesale surveillance and bloated defense budgets. He loves to bluster about corporate welfare and big banks but he voted for funding the Commodity Futures "Modernization" Act which deregulated commercial banks and created an "unregulated market in derivatives and swaps" which was the major contributor to the 2007 economic crisis.

Trump floats a proposal which may end the 70 year military occupation

Germany media Welt.de is looking at this story this morning: According to media reports, US President Donald Trump is considering withdrawing the US soldiers stationed in Germany.

As US Department of Defense tested a deduction stationed in Germany US soldiers, according to a report in the Washington Post. Among the options under consideration are a return of a large part of the approximately 35,000 troops stationed in Germany in the United States or the transfer of all or part of the contingent to Poland, the newspaper reported on Friday.

According to the report, US President Donald Trump had previously raised the idea of ​​a troop withdrawal at a meeting with military advisors and White House officials. European NATO members were worried about the process and tried to clarify whether Trump is serious or the threat of a troop restructuring is a negotiating tactic in the run-up to the NATO summit in July.

According to Washington Post [the reduction] is so far only an internal study of the Pentagon. A spokesman for the National Security Council denied having requested an analysis of a possible withdrawal of troops from Germany. Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon also denied a scheduled withdrawal. At the same time, he explained that the deployment of US troops abroad was regularly reviewed and subjected to "cost-benefit calculations". The US remains committed to Germany and NATO, Pahon said.

Facing a grilling during the House Committee on the Judiciary hearing this morning, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein refused to say whether or not any member of the Obama administration tried to undermine President Donald Trump's campaign leading up to the 2016 presidential election.

"What did the DOJ or FBI do in terms of collecting information, spying, or surveillance on the Trump campaign be it via Stefan Halper or anybody else working on behalf of the agencies?" GOP Rep. Ron DeSantis of Florida asked Rosenstein during a House Committee on the Judiciary hearing Thursday.

"As you know, congressman, I'm not permitted to discuss classified information in an open setting but I can assure you we are working with oversight committees and producing all relevant evidence to allow them to answer those questions," Rosenstein answered.

Unsatisfied with Rosenstein's response, DeSantis pressed him once again.

"Let me ask you this, then, did the Obama administration, anybody in the administration direct anybody, Halper or anybody, to make contact with anyone associated with the Trump campaign?" DeSantis asked.

"As I said, congressman, appreciate the - I understand your interest, I'm not permitted to discuss classified information," Rosenstein said.

Watch the entire exchange below: