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Liam Fox.

The U.K. is battling to stop the European Union blocking Prime Minister Theresa Mays drive to forge new trade partnerships as the country prepares for Brexit.

International Trade Secretary Liam Fox is challenging the attempt to lock the U.K. out of the blocs ongoing trade talks. Hes also opposing efforts to limit Britains power to negotiate commercial accords with other countries before Britain leaves the EU.

EU officials are reportedly pushing for the U.K. to be cut out of sensitive discussions because they are worried confidential information on trade deals would help Mays team negotiate favorable terms with the same countries after Brexit. At the same time, Britain has been warned it cant line up its own free-trade agreements with non-EU nations until it has formally left the bloc in 2019.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Fox hit back on both points. He insisted he has certainly got greater freedom to hold trade talks with other countries now May has formally triggered the Brexit process. And he declared Britain cannot be kept out of the EUs internal trade discussions while still a member of the bloc.

We are a full partner in the EU until we leave and intend to play our full role, Fox said. Clearly when the EU is discussing the U.K., thats a matter for the 27 and not the U.K. but we intend to exercise our full legal rights as one of the 28 members until such time as we stop being a member.

The question of third-country trade deals is a new flash point, with the EU and U.K. already at odds over the structure of the upcoming talks and the size of any exit bill. Such rows have sparked fears that the U.K. and EU wont reach an amicable divorce settlement and agree new terms for future trade in the tight, two-year window available for talks.

The European Commission warned last month there would need to be a discussion about the treatment of sensitive information in the context of certain trade negotiations, which the U.K. would continue to have access to while it remained a full member, the Financial Times reported.

EU officials are concerned that by participating in conversations about talks with countries such as Australia, the U.K. might glean confidential information it can use itself when it tries to win post-Brexit accords.

In the interview, Fox said Britain wanted its own deal with Australia and would not give up its right to see the EUs private trade plans. We think that the U.K. is a key liberalizing influence, and certainly from discussions Ive had other countries welcome us continuing to play that role right until we leave the EU itself, he said.

Now that Article 50 has been triggered, and Britain is clearly on the legal exit path, there is no reason not to start talks with other countries about future trade agreements, he added. Weve certainly got greater freedom now that we are in the process of leaving, he said.

Obviously we cant sign any agreements while we are still members legally of the European Union but we can certainly begin to talk about what we want.

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Fox Fights EU Attempts to Limit U.K. Trade Powers Before Brexit - Bloomberg

Food consumed in the European Union (EU) continues to be either largely free of pesticide residues or to contain only residues the fall within legal limits, new figures show. The latest monitoring report published by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) finds that more than 97 percent of food samples collected across the EU in 2015 were within legal limits and that just over 53 percent were free of quantifiable residues. The figures are in line with those recorded in 2014. Among the key findings are:

Use theinteractive report to go beyond the headline figures and find out more about the findings from 2015.

As part of the annual report, EFSAs review of the results of the EU-coordinated control program (EUCP), under which reporting countries examine samples from the same basket of food items. For 2015 the products were aubergines, bananas, broccoli, virgin olive oil, orange juice, peas, sweet peppers, table grapes, wheat, butter and eggs.

The highest exceedancerate recorded was for broccoli (3.4 percent of samples), followed by table grapes (1.7 percent). Rare exceedances were found for olive oil, orange juice and chicken eggs. No exceedances were recorded for butter.

EFSA also performed a dietary risk assessment based on the EUCP. For both short-term (acute) and long-term (chronic) exposure the Authority concluded that the risk to consumers was low.

The same products were also examined in 2012, since when the overall exceedance rate has fallen slightly from 0.9 percent to 0.8 percent in 2015.

In its report EFSA makes a number of recommendations for increasing the efficiency of the EU-coordinated and national control programmes.

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European Union food again found largely free of pesticides | Food ... - Food Safety News

The U.S. military dropped its largest non-nuclear bomb on an ISIS tunnel complex in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday, a U.S. defense official confirmed to Fox News.

The GBU-43B, a 21,000-pound conventional bomb, was deployed in Nangarhar Province close to the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. By comparison, each Tomahawk cruise missile launched at a Syrian military air base last week weighed 1,000 pounds each.

The MOAB -- Massive Ordnance Air Blast -- is also known as the Mother Of All Bombs. It was first tested in 2003, but hadn't been used in combat before Thursday.

Pentagon spokesman Adam Stump said the bomb had been brought to Afghanistan "some time ago" for potential use.The bomb explodes in the air, creating air pressure that can make tunnels and other structures collapse. It can be used at the start of an offensive to soften up the enemy, weakening both its infrastructure and morale.

"As [ISIS'] losses have mounted, they are using IEDs, bunkers and tunnels to thicken their defense," Gen. John Nicholson, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said in a statement. "This is the right munition to reduce these obstacles and maintain the momentum of our offensive against [ISIS]."

President Trump told media Thursday afternoon that "this was another successful mission" and he gavethe military total authorization.

Trump was also asked whether dropping the bomb sends a warning to North Korea.

"North Korea is a problem, the problem will be taken care of," said Trump.

WHAT IS THE 'MOTHER OF ALL BOMBS'?

The MOAB had to be dropped out of the back of a U.S. Air Force C-130 cargo plane due to its massive size.

"We kicked it out the back door," one U.S. official told Fox News.

Ismail Shinwari, the governor of Achin district, said the U.S. attack was carried out in a remote mountainous area with no civilian homes nearby and that there had been no reports of injured civilians. He said there has been heavy fighting in the area in recent weeks between Afghan forces and ISIS militants.

Hamid Karzai, the former president of Afghanistan, posted on Twitter that he condemned the attack "vehemently" and "in [the] strongest words."

"This is not the war on terror but the inhuman and most brutal misuse of our country as [a] testing ground for new and dangerous weapons," Karzai said. "It is upon us, Afghans, to stop the #USA."

The strike came just days after a Green Beret was killed fighting ISIS in Nangarhar, however, a U.S. defense official told Fox News the bombing had nothing to do with that casualty.

It was the right weapon for the right target, and not in retaliation, the official said.

The U.S. estimates thatbetween 600 to 800 ISIS fighters are present in Afghanistan, mostly in Nangarhar. The U.S. has concentrated heavily on combatting them while also supporting Afghan forces battling the Taliban.

In August, a company of nearly 150 Army Rangers killed "hundreds" of ISIS fighters in Nangarhar, though five of the Rangers were shot. Some weapons and equipment, including communications gear and a rocket launcher, were also left behind following the operation.

Fox News' Martin Hinton and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Lucas Tomlinson is the Pentagon and State Department producer for Fox News Channel. You can follow him on Twitter: @LucasFoxNews

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US drops largest non-nuclear bomb in Afghanistan after Green ...

The GBU-43/B Massive Ordinance Air Blast bomb (MOAB) was dropped Thursday night on a network of fortified underground tunnels that ISIS had been using to stage attacks on government forces.

The strike, in Nangarhar province near the Pakistan border, also killed 36 ISIS fighters, Afghan officials say.

The US military was quizzed Friday on whether the munition, known as the "mother of all bombs" for its extraordinary force, was necessary for the particular target.

The GPS-guided bomb is capable of destroying an area equivalent to nine city blocks.

"This was the right weapon against the right target," the commander for US forces in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, told a press conference.

"It was the right time to use it tactically against the right target on the battlefield."

The blast destroyed three underground tunnels as well as weapons and ammunition, but no civilians were hurt, Afghan and US officials have said.

The US military previously estimated ISIS had 600 to 800 active fighters in the area, but was unclear whether they had hoped to strike more fighters.

Nicholson gave a vague response to a question by reporters on who exactly ordered or greenlighted the strike, saying only that he enjoyed a certain amount of "latitude" to make decisions in his chain of command.

Nicholson also confirmed the strike was carried out in coordination with Afghan officials, and said that the mission had conducted rigorous surveillance before, during and after the operation to prevent civilian deaths.

"Let me be clear -- we will not relent in our mission to fight alongside our Afghan comrades to destroy ISIS-K in 2017," he said, referring to ISIS' regional branch.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said he approved of the strike and that it was designed to support Afghan forces and US forces conducting clearance operations in the region.

The US bomb was dropped as Washington comes under increased scrutiny over its military actions in the Middle East, including three US-led airstrikes in the past month that are reported to have killed civilians or allies.

But US President Donald Trump said Thursday that the Afghanistan bombing was "another successful job."

Residents in villages kilometers away from the target area felt Thursday's powerful strike as if bombs had fallen nearby.

A local resident living around two kilometers (1.5 miles) from the blast told CNN he heard an "extremely loud boom that smashed the windows of our house."

"We were all scared and my children and my wife were crying. We thought it had happened right in front of our house," he said.

"I have witnessed a countless number of explosions and bombings in the last 30 years of war in Afghanistan, but this one was more powerful than any other bomb as far as I remember."

Another Afghan man, 46-year-old Abdul, who lives three kilometers from the site, described the thick cloud of dust that formed after the deafening blast.

"We were unable to see each other at home because of the excessive dust inside the room," he said.

"I was feeling that boom 'til the morning."

Locals told CNN that more than 3,000 families had fled the district in the past year or so since the militant group established its presence.

Those troops are separate to a wider NATO-led effort to train, advise and assist the Afghan army and police force.

The Taliban "control or contest" about a third of the population of the country, Bergen said, citing senior US military officials. That's around 10 million people -- more than the population ISIS controlled in Syria and Iraq at the height of its power during the summer of 2014, he added.

This is the first time a MOAB has been used in the battlefield, according to the US officials. The munition was developed during the Iraq war and is an air blast-type warhead that explodes before hitting the ground in order to project a massive blast to all sides.

Military officials said they hoped the MOAB would create such a huge blast that it would rattle Iraqi troops and pressure them into surrendering or not even fighting.

As originally conceived, the MOAB was to be used against large formations of troops and equipment or hardened above-ground bunkers. The target set has also been expanded to include targets buried under softer surfaces, like caves or tunnels.

CNN's Angela Dewan, Ehsan Popalazia, Ryan Browne, Zachary Cohen, Jim Acosta, Jeremy Diamond, Ehsan Popalzai and Euan McKirdy contributed to this report.

Link:
US military defends dropping 'mother of all bombs' on ISIS in Afghanistan - CNN

New York Times

US Drops 'Mother of All Bombs' on ISIS Caves in Afghanistan New York Times The United States dropped the most powerful nonnuclear bomb in its arsenal on what it said was an ISIS cave complex in remote Afghanistan. The bomb called the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast can obliterate everything within a 1,000-yard ... and more »

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US Drops 'Mother of All Bombs' on ISIS Caves in Afghanistan - New York Times