The "Phase One" deal will mean reduced tariffs on both sides, and China will buy up more American farm products.

* Ex-director admits ‘sloppiness’ in surveillance of Trump aide * Presidential abuse follows Fox News Sunday interview * Impeachment: Democrats fume as Republicans rally to TrumpJames Comey, the former director of the FBI who has become a prime nemesis of Donald Trump, admitted on Sunday to being responsible for “real sloppiness” over the handling of surveillance of a Trump campaign adviser.He also fiercely defended himself and the bureau against any suggestion of political bias, prompting a new threat, of “years in jail”, from Trump.Comey, who was fired by Trump as America’s top law enforcement official in May 2017, came under intense questioning on Fox News Sunday, sparring with anchor Chris Wallace over the findings of the inspector general’s report into the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.Comey seized on one of Michael Horowitz’s main conclusions, that there was no evidence of political bias in the investigation, to launch an impassioned critique of how he and his FBI colleagues had been treated by Trump.“The FBI was accused of treason, of illegal spying, of tapping Mr Trump’s wires illegally, of opening an investigation without justification, of being a criminal conspiracy to unseat a president. All that was nonsense.”He also had pointed words for Fox News: “Remember, I was going to jail, lots of other people were going to jail. People on this network said it over and over again … The American people, especially your viewers, need to realise they were given false information about the FBI.”> I was overconfident in the procedures that the FBI had built over 20 years. I thought they were robust enough> > James ComeyThat Comey was given the opportunity by Fox News to welcome the absence of any bias finding in the report clearly riled Trump, who intervened with a characteristically breathless tweet. Paradoxically, the president accused Horowitz himself – an independent watchdog with no known political animus – of bias.Pointing out that the inspector general was appointed by Barack Obama, Trump claimed: “There was tremendous bias and guilt exposed, so obvious, but Horowitz couldn’t get himself to say it. Big credibility loss.”The president followed up by attacking Comey himself, in loose and intemperate terms. “So now Comey’s admitting he was wrong,” he tweeted. “Wow, but he’s only doing so because he got caught red handed. He was actually caught a long time ago. So what are the consequences for his unlawful conduct. Could it be years in jail? Where are the apologies to me and others, Jim?”Even before Trump’s intemperate intervention, Comey did not get an easy ride. Under persistent questioning by Wallace, he was forced to admit he presided over serious mistakes in the course of applying for permission to place former Trump adviser Carter Page under surveillance.The IG report gives details of 17 “significant errors and omissions” in the way four applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (Fisa) court were made from October 2016, the first two on Comey’s watch.Asked to explain the contrast between the report’s criticism of serious problems in the Fisa process and his earlier defense of the FBI’s actions as “thoughtful and appropriate”, Comey replied that Horowitz “was right, I was wrong”.“I was overconfident in the procedures that the FBI had built over 20 years. I thought they were robust enough. It’s incredibly hard to get a Fisa and he was right there was real sloppiness. It was not acceptable.”Comey’s admittance of fallibility, albeit over procedural issues rather than the overriding accusation of bias, is likely to give Trump and his enablers in the Republican party the fuel they need to continue to attack the FBI as the heart of the supposed “deep state”. William Barr, the US attorney general, has already launched his own investigation of the Russia investigation.Trump has gone on the warpath on the back of the IG’s report, despite its central finding of lack of evidence of any conspiracy. At a rally this week in Hershey, Pennsylvania, the president falsely claimed the FBI had conducted multiple undercover operations spying on his campaign.“Look how they’ve hurt people,” he said. “They’ve destroyed the lives of people that were great people, that are still great people. Their lives have been destroyed by scum. OK, by scum.”Hours before the Fox News Sunday broadcast, Trump hurled further insults, calling Comey a “sleazebag”. The Texas senator Ted Cruz then added reinforcement, telling ABC’s This Week the IG report was “unbelievably damning of the Department of Justice and FBI. The abuse of power that occurred there is stunning.”Neither the president nor the senator pointed out that two of the four Fisa applications were brought to the court by Trump’s own administration.Page was an adviser on foreign affairs to the 2016 Trump campaign. Comey admitted Page had been “treated unfairly” in being subjected to wiretapping. The most egregious aspect, he said, had been Page’s name being made public. “He is a United States citizen and it never should have been made public – that was an outrage.”Horowitz pinpointed significant problems committed by three teams of FBI investigators. Two errors in particular stand out.The report highlights that the Fisa court was not told Page had contact with the CIA even after the FBI had become aware of that link, which would have severely diluted any suspicion of wrongdoing in his dealings with Russia. A justice department lawyer even altered an email to hide this crucial detail.The report also criticizes the FBI for critically relying on the highly contentious Steele dossier, an investigation conducted as opposition research against Trump that was paid for initially by Trump’s Republican opponents and then by Democrats.Horowitz found the Steele dossier had played a “central and essential” role in the Fisa application, despite having contained “misstated or exaggerated” intelligence.Comey told Fox News the Steele dossier had been just “one of a bunch of different facts that were assembled to apply to the court”. But he conceded it had “convinced the lawyers that they had enough to go forward” with a surveillance application.

Italian authorities ordered the biggest peacetime evacuation in the country since World War Two on Sunday to defuse a massive unexploded British bomb that was partially damaged when discovered in the southern city of Brindisi. The historic evacuation displaced some 53,000 residents  —more than half — of the coastal city on the Adriatic,  due to the high risk that the 440-pound ordnance containing 40 kilograms of dynamite could explode. The chances of detonation were increased after the munition was damaged on November 2  by a bulldozer excavating for a remodel of a cinema.. The bomb is believed to have been dropped on the city in a 1941 air raid, during the period of World War Two when Italy was still allied with Germany and Royal Air Force  bombers based in Malta were targeting Naples, Brindisi and Bari in order to disrupt Axis shipping lanes. According to the Italian defence department, it is just one of thousands of unexploded ordnances that still lie dormant and undiscovered throughout Italy. Earlier this month more than 10,000 Turin residents were evacuated for the deactivation of a similar British bomb, as were 4000 residents of the northern city of Bolzano in October.  In the month and a half since the unexploded bomb was discovered in Brindisi, city officials put into place a strict evacuation plan with a 1,617 metre “red zone” around the damaged bomb, which was reinforced with an external structure last week. The city's airport, train station, hospitals and prison were shut down as part of the operation on Sunday.   By  mid-morning the bomb had been successfully defused by a team of more than a dozen Italian army explosives experts, who used a special metal key that was carefully turned with remote-controlled technology, as the mayor and other security officials watched drone footage of the operation from a nearby situation room. The bomb is expected to be set off tomorrow in a remote location outside the city.

A strong earthquake jolted the southern Philippines on Sunday, killing at least one person and causing a three-story building to collapse, setting off a search for people feared to have been trapped inside, officials said. The magnitude 6.9 quake struck an area about 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) northwest of Padada town in Davao del Sur province at a depth of 30 kilometers (18 miles), according to the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology. A child was killed in a village in Davao del Sur’s Matanao town when a wall of her house tumbled down as the ground shook and hit her in the head, officials said.

The bodies of two children were found about three miles from the crash scene.