Day: July 12, 2024

MIAMI:”Orban Meets Trump Post-NATO Summit”, Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban jetted off to Florida on Thursday (Jul 11) to meet with former United States president Donald Trump after the end of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Washington.

The sit-down at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate is likely to further upset Budapest’s allies after Orban drew widespread ire from European counterparts for meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin last week.

Right-wing Orban, whose country took over the rotating presidency of the European Union this month, has been a vocal supporter of Trump, and last met the 2024 Republican presidential hopeful in March.

“We discussed ways to make peace,” Orban said in a post on social media on Thursday evening with a picture of the two leaders meeting. “The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!”

Trump responded to Orban’s post, writing on his Truth Social site: There must be PEACE, and quickly. Too many people have died in a war that should never have started!”

Orban sparked uproar in the EU by jetting to Moscow to hold talks with Putin on what the Hungarian leader described as a “peace mission” over the war in Ukraine.

“Ukraine Prosecutor Urges ICC to Prosecute Kyiv Hospital Attack”, In The Hague, Ukraine’s top prosecutor has urged the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute Russia for a recent missile strike on a children’s hospital in Kyiv.

Ukraine’s capital suffered on Monday (Jul 8) one of its worst days of airstrikes since the start of Russia’s war, and attacks across the country killed at least 44 people including two adults at Okhmatdyt children’s hospital, Ukrainian officials have said.

“For the sake of international justice, cases like the intentional attack on the biggest child hospital in Kyiv (are) worth lifting to the ICC,” Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin told Reuters late on Thursday in an interview in The Hague, where the ICC is based.

Moscow denies attacking the hospital and has blamed Ukrainian anti-missile fire for the hit on the clinic, which is one of Europe’s largest and treats patients with serious conditions such as cancer and kidney disease.

Kostin, in The Hague for regular meetings with legal officials, said if the ICC took on the prosecution of the hospital strike, it could help establish a pattern of attacks that show Russia is committing crimes against humanity in Ukraine.

It has issued six arrest warrants for alleged Russian crimes in Ukraine including one against President Vladimir Putin.

Moscow has repeatedly denied accusations that its forces have committed atrocities since it invaded its neighbour.

Kostin said the decision to prosecute lies with the ICC’s prosecutor, adding that Ukraine was ready to share any physical evidence or details of its investigation with the court.

He said that while Ukrainian authorities were looking into all of Monday’s attacks, they can only bring charges of war crimes and not the more serious offence of crimes against humanity because they are not part of Ukraine’s criminal code.

“Japan Inflation to Rise as BOJ Considers Rate Hikes: Reuters Poll”, In June, Japan’s core consumer inflation likely increased for the second consecutive month, according to a Reuters poll of 18 economists. This development is expected to maintain pressure on the central bank to consider raising interest rates.

Separate data from the Ministry of Finance will likely show that export growth slowed down year-on-year in June, undershooting import gains and leaving behind a trade deficit.

Data from the internal affairs and communications ministry is expected to show on July 19 that the core Consumer Prices Index, which excludes fresh food, rose 2.7 per cent year-on-year in June, faster than the previous month’s 2.5 per cent rise.

That would mean that inflation has remained above the Bank of Japan’s 2 per cent target for the 27th straight month, concerning the BOJ which reckons inflation is being powered by external cost pressures, rather than the domestic demand which policymakers are trying to encourage.

In Japan, inflation has been fuelled by higher raw materials and fuel import costs, exacerbated by a weak yen.

Normalising monetary policy will need a “virtuous growth cycle” materialising in Japan, the BOJ has said, in which solid wage hikes are accompanied by durable inflation and household consumption.

The data will be scrutinised by the BOJ at its policy-setting meeting on July 30-31 at which the central bank will review its projections for GDP growth and inflation.

Some investors are betting the central bank will raise interest rates in July, while cutting its government bond buying as a step towards normalising monetary policy. Earlier this year the BOJ began unwinding its unconventional policy, raising interest rates in March for the first time since 2007.