US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke for more than an hour on Friday, discussing the possibility of a new nuclear accord, North Korean denuclearisation, Ukraine and the political situation in Venezuela, the White House said.

“Had a long and very good conversation with President Putin of Russia,” Trump said in a post on Twitter, noting they had discussed trade, Venezuela, Ukraine, North Korea, nuclear arms and Special Counsel Robert Mueller‘s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential campaign.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters that the call was an “overall positive conversation”.

Mueller report

Sanders said the two men, who last chatted informally at a dinner of world leaders in Buenos Aires on December 1, briefly talked about the report Mueller report that concluded Trump did not collude with Russia during his 2016 presidential campaign. 

The Mueller probe discussion was “essentially in the context of that it’s over and there was no collusion, which I’m pretty sure both leaders were very well aware of long before this call took place,” Sanders said.

The Kremlin confirmed the two leaders talked and highlighted in its statement that the call was initiated by Washington.

It said the two leaders agreed to maintain contacts on different levels and expressed satisfaction with the “businesslike and constructive nature” of the conversation.

Venezuela

With the United States concerned about a Russian military presence in Venezuela at a time when Washington wants Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to leave power, Trump told Putin “the United States stands with the people of Venezuela” and stressed he wanted to get relief supplies into the country, Sanders said. 

Putin told Trump that any external interference in Venezuela’s internal business undermines the prospects of a political end to the crisis, the Kremlin said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo by phone on Wednesday that further “aggressive steps” in Venezuela would be fraught with the gravest consequences, the Russian ministry said.

The US State Department said Pompeo urged Russia on the call to stop supporting Maduro. He also “stressed that the intervention by Russia and Cuba is destabilising for Venezuela and for the US-Russia bilateral relationship,” it said. 

New START treaty

Sanders told reporters Trump and Putin talked about the possibility of a new multilateral nuclear accord between the US, Russia and China, or an extension of the current US-Russia strategic nuclear treaty.

She did not say which arms control agreement Trump and Putin discussed, but the Russian state news agency Tass reported that they talked about the New START treaty, the last major arms-control treaty remaining between the US and Russia.

The 2011 New START treaty expires in February 2021 but can be extended for five years if both sides agree. Without the agreement, it could be harder to gauge each other’s intentions, arms control advocates say. 

The New START treaty required the US and Russia to cut their deployed strategic nuclear warheads to no more than 1,550, the lowest level in decades, and limit delivery systems – land- and submarine-based missiles and nuclear-capable bombers.

It also includes extensive transparency measures requiring each side to allow the other to carry out 10 inspections of strategic nuclear bases each year; give 48 hours notice before new missiles covered by the treaty leave their factories; and provide notifications before ballistic missile launches.

Trump has called the New START treaty a “bad deal” and “one-sided”.

“They discussed a nuclear agreement, both new and extended, and the possibility of having conversations with China on that as well,” Sanders said.

The Kremlin said the two sides confirmed they intended to “activate dialogue in various spheres, including strategic security”.

Trump earlier pulled the plug on a decades-old nuclear arms treaty with Russia. Trump accused Moscow of violating the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) with “impunity” by deploying missiles banned by the pact. Moscow denies violating it and has accused Washington of being in non-compliance.

Ukraine

Sanders also said the two leaders discussed Ukraine.

Trump cancelled a summit meeting with Putin late last year after Russia seized three Ukrainian Navy ships on November 25 and arrested 24 sailors. Putin also told Trump that the new leadership in Ukraine should take steps to solve the Ukrainian crisis, the Kremlin said. 

North Korea

Trump also raised with Putin the issue of getting North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes. Trump has met twice with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un but Kim has yet to agree to a disarmament deal. 

Sanders said Trump mentioned several times “the need and importance of Russia stepping up and continuing to put pressure on North Korea to denuclearize.” The Kremlin said both leaders highlighted the need to pursue denuclearisation of the region.

During an April summit with Kim in Vladivostok, Putin expressed Russian support for a gradual process of trading disarmament for sanctions relief.

Image: ALFSnaiper / getty

Tens of thousands of Algerians poured onto the streets for the 11th consecutive Friday demanding the departure of Algeria‘s ruling elite a month after the downfall of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

The ailing Bouteflika resigned on April 2 in the face of mass protests and a call from the military for his impeachment. 

But his exit after 20 years in power has failed to satisfy demonstrators who want to sweep away the remnants of his ruling elite and make sure the old guard cannot hand-pick a new president. 

Protesters have continued mass demonstrations every Friday, demanding other members of Bouteflika’s inner circle also give way. 

These include the interim president, Abdelkader Bensalah, who is serving for 90 days until an election on July 4, and Prime Minister Noureddine Bedoui, appointed by Bouteflika days before he stepped down. 

“You must go” and “Thieves you have destroyed the country”, read banners held up by protesters.

“Peaceful, peaceful,” others chanted while marching through central Algiers.

The weekly protests have become a key means of keeping up the pressure on the government as huge crowds have brought the centre of the capital Algiers and other key cities to a standstill. 

“We will march until the entire group of Bouteflika’s men leaves,” said Hamid Benmouhoub, a 55-year-old tradesman who had travelled 350 kilometres to join the demonstration in the capital. 

Pressure on military 

The army remains the most powerful institution in Algeria, having swayed politics from the shadows for decades. It has so far patiently monitored the mostly peaceful protests that at times have swelled to hundreds of thousands of people. 

The key power broker is military chief Ahmed Gaid Salah, a long-time Bouteflika loyalist who ended up withdrawing his support for his boss. 

But the crowds filling the capital’s central avenues on Friday chanted for Gaid Salah to “resign” and held placards reading “No to military rule”. 

Last week Gaid Salah said several big corruption cases would come to light in a crackdown on corruption.

A number of figures from the ruling elite including the finance minister, former prime minister and several rich businessmen have come under investigation in recent weeks.

Refusing dialogue

On Wednesday, Gaid Salah called for dialogue between protesters and the “institutions of the state” a day after digging in against demands that key leaders quit and be replaced by transitional bodies.

“We cannot hold a dialogue with the symbols of the old system,” Abdelouahab Fersaoui, president of the Rally for Youth Action civil society group, told the TSA news site.  

“We can’t start a dialogue with Bensalah or Bedoui or anyone else who is responsible for the current state of the country.”

Friday’s protest is the last before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when days of fasting typically see a drop off in daytime activity.  

But Algerians pledged to keep up their protests regardless.

“We will continue to march during Ramadan to demand a transition period with clean people (in charge). We will not let up,” said Zakia Benabdrahmane, 56, who travelled 40 km to get to the capital to demonstrate. 

The Twitter exchange played out over several hours on April 11: “Many profitable companies pay nothing in corporate income tax. Elizabeth Warren has a plan to stop that,” Vox wrote, linking to one of its wonky explainers. “You bet I do,” Warren tweeted back.

Then a woman named Keely Murphy — a self-described bookworm, space enthusiast and feminist — replied back to the Massachusetts senator: “I would certainly buy a shirt that said ‘Elizabeth Warren: She’s Got a Plan for That.’”

Story Continued Below

Within days, the tweet — along with many others the campaign had been noticing expressing unbridled enthusiasm for Warren’s policy-heavy approach to her presidential candidacy — prompted the campaign to embrace the nerd-tastic meme. “I got a plan” has become a staple of her stump speech, often drawing loud applause. And Warren fans like Murphy can now purchase “Warren has a plan for that” T-shirts and tote bags from her website.

The bottom-up evolution of the slogan is a source of encouragement for the Warren campaign, perhaps a sign that the former Harvard professor’s policy-heavy bid is breaking through. Since January, she’s rolled out plans to break up tech companies, forgive over $600 billion in student loan debt, enact a 2 percent wealth tax, provide universal child care and more — lapping the Democratic field on both the volume and scope of policy proposals.

She regularly goes into the weeds when taking questions at town halls and sometimes cautions voters that she’s going to “nerd out” for a bit. Some of her supporters see the approach as a way to distinguish her as a heavyweight in a crowded 2020 field. And Warren’s embrace of “I got a plan” has coincided with a rise in her poll numbers over the past two weeks.

Some Democrats say it’s unclear whether voters will ultimately care about the policy rollouts. They point out that Hillary Clinton also had a well-staffed policy shop and that the flood of white papers didn’t always resonate with voters.

But for now, at least, Warren and her campaign think they might be on to something.

In Salt Lake City on April 17, Warren told a crowd: “We need big, systemic change in this country. Big change.”

“And I got a plan!” she said, raising her arms in the air triumphantly as the crowd applauded.

A week later in Houston, Warren spoke at the “She the People” forum for women of color. She was discussing her ideas to address racial disparities in maternal mortality before pointing out, “I got a plan.” The audience erupted.

“Every time she said, ‘I got a plan,’ you could hear cheering and, ‘She ready!’” said Mari Urbina, national political director for the progressive group Indivisible who attended the Houston event. “It was audibly clear the audience connected with Warren’s ‘I got a plan,’ because they were eager to hear specific solutions to the real pain points facing women of color.”

Warren’s campaign told POLITICO her steady clip of policy proposals would continue over the next few months, including one next week. All of which suggests that “I got a plan” could further define her candidacy.

It wouldn’t be the first rallying cry inspired from outside the campaign. Warren regularly circles back to the word “persist,” a reference to when Mitch McConnell cut her off from speaking on the Senate floor in 2017.

The Republican leader chastised her: “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”

Naturally, Warren’s website currently has “We Persist” hoodies and T-shirts and “Pint-Sized Persister” onesies for sale.

©2019
Mashable, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Mashable, MashBash and Mashable House are among the federally registered trademarks of Ziff Davis, LLC and may not be used by third parties without explicit permission.

©2019
Mashable, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Mashable, MashBash and Mashable House are among the federally registered trademarks of Ziff Davis, LLC and may not be used by third parties without explicit permission.