Terry Armstrong" srcset="https://s3media.247sports.com/Uploads/Assets/110/335/8335110.jpg?fit=bounds&crop=620:320,offset-y0.50&width=620&height=320" data-src="https://s3media.247sports.com/Uploads/Assets/110/335/8335110.jpg?fit=bounds&crop=620:320,offset-y0.50&width=620&height=320" />Terry Armstrong(Photo: Jon Lopez/Nike, 247Sports)
On Friday, Terry Armstrong announced that he has decided to play basketball professionally for the South East Melbourne Phoenix in Australia's NBL.
Armstrong verbally committed to Arizona on Oct. 24 and eventually signed with the Wildcats. A 6-foot-6 wing out of Scottsdale (Ariz.) Bella Vista Prep, informed the Arizona coaching staff of his decision in the middle of June.
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Opting out of college for professional options is growing trend among high school prospects. Armstrong is the fourth high school recruit in the 2020 recruit class to opt for the professional ranks in the last three weeks.
RJ Hamptonsigned a deal with the New Zealand Breakers, of the NBL, in late May. Then KJ Martin, the son ofKenyon Martin, opted out of a scholarship to Vanderbilt to pursue going pro a few days later. In addition,LaMelo Ball, who likely wouldn’t have been eligible for college basketball, announced he’s headed to the NBL as well.
Last summer Armstrong averaged 20.4 points and 5.3 rebounds in 12 Nike EYBL games. Armstrong connected on 89 of 180 field goal attempts, including 21 of 60 from the three-point stripe, during the league.
Upon signing with Arizona, Arizona head coach Sean Miller spoke highly of Armstrong.
"Terry was kind of born and raised in the state of Michigan," Arizona head coachSean Millerhas previously said. "Terry brings a toughness to our program that I think all of love to have as coaches. He also has great size for a wing and a guard.
"It’s not that he does one thing well. It’s the versatility that jumps off the page when we watch him and I think the best is yet to come. He’s in a program right now that is playing against the best competition in America at the high school level and I am really excited for him, anxious for him to have a great senior year. He will be able to come in and impact our program right away."
There have been some questions as to whether or not Armstrong would qualify to go to Arizona. He reaffirmed his commitment in late May when it looked as if he would open up his recruitment.
The decision came soon after meeting with Sean Miller and a public tweet that said he was going to continue to be an Arizona Wildcat.
A little over a month later, Armstrong is going to Australia to play for a team that will be entering its first season in the NBL.
Armstrong is ranked No. 61 overall and as the No. 8 shooting guard in the 247Sports Composite Rankings.
Australia isn’t expecting the U.S.-China trade fight to end soon. Pictured, a storm passes by as an amateur photographer in Melbourne, Australia.
Photo:
Michael Dodge/Getty Images
CANBERRA, Australia—There has been no sign of a speedy resolution to U.S.-China trade tensions in recent meetings with American officials, Australia’s top finance minister said, despite President Trump’s more-conciliatory tone at last weekend’s Group of 20 summit.
Mr. Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping managed to get trade talks back on track last weekend, bolstering hopes of a break in trade hostilities between the world’s two biggest economies.
Australia’s Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, however, said on Friday he had seen no sign during meetings with counterparts or recent separate talks with U.S. officials that a resolution was on the horizon. “These issues aren’t going away anytime soon,” Mr. Frydenberg said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
Australia’s Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, left, talks with specialist trader Paul Cosentino on the New York Stock Exchange trading floor, June 19.
Photo:
Richard Drew/Associated Press
The global nature of trade means the bilateral spat is dealing a blow to economic growth world-wide. In April, the International Monetary Fund reduced its global growth forecast for 2019 to 3.3%—growth was 3.6% last year—and said trade tensions could weigh on it further.
China’s demand has been the biggest driver of global expansion. The trade tensions risk exacerbating the Chinese economy’s slowdown, with the collateral damage likely to include Australian mining giants who would be hard-hit by any slip in China’s demand for Australian resources such as copper and iron ore.
Mr. Frydenberg met recently with U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to gauge political resolve in Washington on a range of issues including trade and urge a de-escalation in global tensions. Australia is a supporter of trade liberalization. Last year, it joined 12 other members of the World Trade Organization in supporting proposed changes to the world trade umpire, which Mr. Trump has called “the worst organization ever created.”
Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison used a recent trade-focused speech to indirectly criticize Mr. Trump’s negotiating style as a “a narrow, transactional approach” where longstanding alliance relationships were being wound back to “nothing more than the sum of our deals.”
While Canberra understands U.S. frustrations with the multilateral trading system, Mr. Frydenberg said the answer is in reforming rather than dismantling the dispute process or withdrawing altogether from the WTO. An appellate body at the WTO that handles trade disputes could become dysfunctional by the end of the year because the U.S. has blocked the appointment of new judges.
“While the World Trade Organization is not the flavor of the month, it can be re-equipped to deal with some of the issues,” said Mr. Frydenberg.
Australia’s resource-reliant economy is one of the world’s most China-dependent. Mr. Morrison’s conservative government has been anxiously watching for progress in trade talks amid concerns that any fallout could worsen already anemic growth and prematurely end a record 28-year growth streak.
As part of President Trump’s efforts to rebalance trade relationships, he has imposed tariffs on almost every country around the world. WSJ’s Josh Zumbrun explains where we stand with our largest trading partners. Photo composite: Laura Kammerman
The country’s independent central bank lowered its official cash rate to a record low of 1.0% from 1.25% on Tuesday, delivering the first back-to-back cut since 2012. Reserve Bank of Australia Gov. Philip Lowe has kept open the prospect of even further cuts should the economy fail to rebound.
The low level of interest rates has some economists discussing the potential for the central bank to adopt unorthodox monetary policy to revive an economy growing at its weakest pace since the global financial crisis. The central bank is leaning on Canberra to support its efforts with infrastructure spending and fiscal stimulus.
Mr. Frydenberg said while growth has slowed, the economy remains one of the fastest-growing in the developed world. A US$111 billion, decadelong package of tax cuts passed Thursday would help, he added.
“The fundamentals of the Australian economy remain sound, we have a triple-A sovereign credit rating, and a budget coming back into surplus for the first time in a decade,” he said.
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South African-born Australian resident Jordan Fox has announced her commitment to Wayne State University where she will swim and study towards an Accounting major beginning in the fall of 2019.
Fox currently swims for Bayside Swimming Club, based in Victoria, Australia. She excels in backstroke and freestyle and favors the 200s. She was runner-up in the B final of the 200m back at the 2019 Australian Swimming Championships, going a PB of 2:15.63. At the same meet she finished 15th overall in the 100m back with 1:04.62, again notching a best time. She also went lifetime bests in the 50 back and 200 free at in Adelaide.
Fox has been a member of Swimming Victoria’s Performance Squad since 2017. She was part of the team that won the Victoria state grammar schools’ swimming championships for 5 consecutive years and captained the team in the 5th year. She was also the 2017-2018 captain of the Mentone Grammar School girls’ swim team and received the award for the “Best Team Member for Leadership, Determination and Service” in 2018.
Consistently ranked as a Top 10 swimmer in her age group in the state of Victoria for the past 4 seasons, her best LCM times include:
50 back – 30.82 (27.22 in SCY)
100 back – 1:04.62 (57.13 in SCY)
200 back – 2:15.63 (2:00.02 in SCY)
200 free – 2:08.81 (1:53.16 in SCY)
Fox will integrate Wayne State’s strong backstroke group led by rising senior Ashlen Michalski, who placed 13th in the 100 back and 10th in the 200 back at 2019 NCAA Division II Championships.
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"I'm ok, yeah, I'm good, I'm very good," Mr Sigley is seen saying on footage reportedly showing his arrival in Beijing, according to Australian media.
The 29-year-old's father later told local news outlets that their family was "over the moon that he is safe and sound".
"Last week has been very difficult... we're just happy that the situation has been resolved. He tried to ring me a few minutes ago, I will talk to him some time today," Gary Sigley told local outlets outside their family home in Perth.
News of Mr Sigley's release was announced by Mr Morrison to parliament on Thursday. He said it was the result of "discreet, behind the scenes work of officials in resolving complex and sensitive consular cases".
"We are pleased to announce that Mr Alek Sigley has today been released from detention in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). He is safe and well." Mr Morrison said.
He said Swedish authorities had met with senior officials from the DPRK on Wednesday and "raised the issue of Alek's disappearance on Australia's behalf".
"I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to the Swedish authorities for their invaluable assistance."
Sweden is one of few Western countries that have an embassy in North Korea and often acts as an intermediary for countries that don't.
'Discreet diplomacy'
Hywel Griffith, BBC News Sydney correspondent
The relief felt by Alek Sigley's family, and many others across Australia, is obvious.
With no embassy in Pyongyang and no direct contact with North Korea, the Australian government was left to depend on the good-will of others to help find him. Prime Minister Scott Morrison was glowing in his praise for the way in which Swedish officials worked to secure his release.
Clearly there were concerns that publicly confronting North Korea would prove provocative and potentially harmful to Mr Sigley. Instead, careful and discreet diplomacy got the desired result.
Of course, we do not know what, if anything, was offered in return. But for now the focus is on celebrating that he is safe and well.
Who is Alek Sigley?
Mr Sigley was one of very few foreigners living in North Korea.
Originally from Perth, for the past year he had been pursuing a degree in Korean literature at Kim Il-sung University.
He also ran a business providing tours for Western tourists visiting the totalitarian, communist state.
In March, he described himself as "the only Australian living in North Korea" in a piece published by The Guardian.
Last week, his family and friends lost contact with him, sparking fears he might have been detained.
Several foreigners have previously been detained in North Korea, sometimes for illegally entering the country or for what Pyongyang terms "hostile criminal acts against the state".
"I'm ok, yeah, I'm good, I'm very good," Mr Sigley is seen saying on footage reportedly showing his arrival in Beijing, according to Australian media.
The 29-year-old's father later told local news outlets that their family was "over the moon that he is safe and sound".
"Last week has been very difficult... we're just happy that the situation has been resolved. He tried to ring me a few minutes ago, I will talk to him some time today," Gary Sigley told local outlets outside their family home in Perth.
News of Mr Sigley's release was announced by Mr Morrison to parliament on Thursday. He said it was the result of "discreet, behind the scenes work of officials in resolving complex and sensitive consular cases".
"We are pleased to announce that Mr Alek Sigley has today been released from detention in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). He is safe and well." Mr Morrison said.
He said Swedish authorities had met with senior officials from the DPRK on Wednesday and "raised the issue of Alek's disappearance on Australia's behalf".
"I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to the Swedish authorities for their invaluable assistance."
Sweden is one of few Western countries that have an embassy in North Korea and often acts as an intermediary for countries that don't.
'Discreet diplomacy'
Hywel Griffith, BBC News Sydney correspondent
The relief felt by Alek Sigley's family, and many others across Australia, is obvious.
With no embassy in Pyongyang and no direct contact with North Korea, the Australian government was left to depend on the good-will of others to help find him. Prime Minister Scott Morrison was glowing in his praise for the way in which Swedish officials worked to secure his release.
Clearly there were concerns that publicly confronting North Korea would prove provocative and potentially harmful to Mr Sigley. Instead, careful and discreet diplomacy got the desired result.
Of course, we do not know what, if anything, was offered in return. But for now the focus is on celebrating that he is safe and well.
Who is Alek Sigley?
Mr Sigley was one of very few foreigners living in North Korea.
Originally from Perth, for the past year he had been pursuing a degree in Korean literature at Kim Il-sung University.
He also ran a business providing tours for Western tourists visiting the totalitarian, communist state.
In March, he described himself as "the only Australian living in North Korea" in a piece published by The Guardian.
Last week, his family and friends lost contact with him, sparking fears he might have been detained.
Several foreigners have previously been detained in North Korea, sometimes for illegally entering the country or for what Pyongyang terms "hostile criminal acts against the state".
"I'm ok, yeah, I'm good, I'm very good," Mr Sigley is seen saying on footage reportedly showing his arrival in Beijing, according to Australian media.
The 29-year-old's father later told local news outlets that their family was "over the moon that he is safe and sound".
"Last week has been very difficult... we're just happy that the situation has been resolved. He tried to ring me a few minutes ago, I will talk to him some time today," Gary Sigley told local outlets outside their family home in Perth.
News of Mr Sigley's release was announced by Mr Morrison to parliament on Thursday. He said it was the result of "discreet, behind the scenes work of officials in resolving complex and sensitive consular cases".
"We are pleased to announce that Mr Alek Sigley has today been released from detention in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). He is safe and well." Mr Morrison said.
He said Swedish authorities had met with senior officials from the DPRK on Wednesday and "raised the issue of Alek's disappearance on Australia's behalf".
"I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to the Swedish authorities for their invaluable assistance."
Sweden is one of few Western countries that have an embassy in North Korea and often acts as an intermediary for countries that don't.
'Discrete diplomacy'
Hywel Griffith, BBC News Sydney correspondent
The relief felt by Alek Sigley's family, and many others across Australia, is obvious.
With no embassy in Pyongyang and no direct contact with North Korea, the Australian government was left to depend on the good-will of others to help find him. Prime Minister Scott Morrison was glowing in his praise for the way in which Swedish officials worked to secure his release.
Clearly there were concerns that publicly confronting North Korea would prove provocative and potentially harmful to Mr Sigley. Instead, careful and discrete diplomacy got the desired result.
Of course, we do not know what, if anything, was offered in return. But for now the focus is on celebrating that he is safe and well.
Who is Alek Sigley?
Mr Sigley was one of very few foreigners living in North Korea.
Originally from Perth, for the past year he had been pursuing a degree in Korean literature at Kim Il-sung University.
He also ran a business providing tours for Western tourists visiting the totalitarian, communist state.
In March, he described himself as "the only Australian living in North Korea" in a piece published by The Guardian.
Last week, his family and friends lost contact with him, sparking fears he might have been detained.
Several foreigners have previously been detained in North Korea, sometimes for illegally entering the country or for what Pyongyang terms "hostile criminal acts against the state".
Facilities at the Manus Island Regional Processing Centre, used for the detention of asylum-seekers who arrive by boat, are pictured on Oct. 16, 2012, in Papua New Guinea.
Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship via Getty Images.
Australia’s asylum policies—which see asylum-seekers languishing for years under inhumane conditions in offshore detention centers in Papua New Guinea and Nauru—are already a source of great shame for many Australians. Widely condemned by human rights groups and the United Nations, the policies contravene various human rights charters, including the 1951 Refugee Convention and even the Convention Against Torture. A U.N. report called on Australia to close the offshore centers, finding “inadequate mental health services, serious safety concerns and instances of assault, sexual abuse, self-harm and suspicious deaths; and about reports that harsh conditions compelled some asylum seekers to return to their country of origin despite the risks that they face there.” Just last week, a former detainee who spent six years on Manus Island begged the U.N. Human Rights Council to hold Australia to account, calling the centers—not just the circumstances they were fleeing—a humanitarian crisis.
But when Donald Trump—the U.S. president whose administration separates children from their families to deter asylum-seekers—says there is much to be learned from Australia’s immigration policies, it’s a fresh reminder of just how bad things have become.
On his way to a working dinner with newly reelected Prime Minister Scott Morrison at the G-20 summit in Japan last week, Trump tweeted out four Australian government flyers, noting that “much can be learned” from them:
These anti-asylum posters, which are no longer in use, were created by the Australian government in 2014, back when Morrison (who at one point had been in charge of encouraging people to come to the country, as director of Tourism Australia) was immigration and border protection minister. One displays a small boat on rough open waters, with a message echoing beloved quasi-anthem “I Still Call Australia Home” in warning, “NO WAY. YOU WILL NOT MAKE AUSTRALIA HOME.” The unwelcome posters were just one of Australia’s many controversial advertising campaigns aimed at deterring refugees from attempting to reach Australia’s shores by boat by convincing them the journey would not end in refuge. Australia has invested heavily in such campaigns, which over the years have included videos and even graphic novels depicting detainees in distress, showing off the cruelty they will face if they come. Critics such as former Greens immigration spokesperson Sarah Hanson-Young have labeled the campaigns “fearmongering propaganda”—they are, like much of Australia’s immigration policy, heartless.
It’s not the first time Trump has praised Australia’s hard-line policies: In 2017, then–Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was attempting to convince Trump to uphold a deal negotiated under the Obama administration for the U.S. to resettle detained asylum-seekers who had been attempting to reach Australia. When Turnbull explained Australia’s policy of not accepting those who seek asylum via boat, Trump reportedly told him, “We should do that too. You are worse than I am.”
Trump is reportedly a fan of Turnbull’s successor, Morrison, repeatedly comparing his recent surprise upset to his own (and, of course, declaring that he saw it coming). It’s not clear where Trump saw the Morrison posters, but they seem to represent a friendly little tip from one tough-on-borders leader to another, just as the image of a drowned Salvadoran migrant father and daughter made headlines around the globe.
The lesson Trump presumably wants to draw from these posters is how better to deter people from seeking asylum—something those people have every right to do under international law. As Trump said when he saw the viral image from the U.S. border, “A very very dangerous journey. And by the way many other things happened. Women being raped; women being raped in numbers nobody believed.” The Australian government often justifies its cruelty as a deterrent: to discourage refugees from making the “very very dangerous journey” by sea by making it clear that they will never be settled in Australia, and will suffer greatly if they try to be. It’s for their own good, the government says while simultaneously stoking fears of a flood of boats making their way to Australia if they weaken their system even slightly—punishment in the name of protection.
As Kon Karapanagiotidis—founder and CEO of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and one of the most outspoken refugee advocates in Australia—laid out in a reply to Trump’s tweet, there is a swath of horrors to learn from Australia, if abject cruelty and maximum suffering are what you’re aiming for.
The most obvious thing for the U.S. to learn from Australia is not to go down this path. This should be obvious enough, from the list Karapanagiotidis shared, from the conditions these human beings live under with no end in sight.
The most obvious thing for the U.S. to learn from Australia is not to go down thispath.
But there is an especially acute lesson to take away from this about not allowing cruelty to become normalized. Just like in the United States, this has been an incremental slide for Australia. Many of the asylum-seekers who try to reach Australia attempt to come by boat via Southeast Asia. Mandatory detention of these migrants for the assessment of “unlawful arrivals,” implemented in the early ’90s by a Labor government with a 273-day limit, soon became offshore detention. The 2000s conservative coalition government implemented the “Pacific Solution,” interning asylum-seekers on nearby island nations instead. Temporary detention soon became seemingly permanent, with a later coalition government declaring that no asylum-seeker who arrives by boat will ever be allowed to live in Australia, regardless of the legitimacy of her claim. (The only options for detainees are to return to their home countries, something they are often pressured to do, or wait for a resettlement deal to be negotiated.) The system has become increasingly secretive, with the media unable to access the camps, and those working within them facing jail time if they leak information.
Many Australians object to the detention centers, but system is now so ingrained in the country’s politics that it’s difficult to see an end to it. Both sides of political spectrum support the general principle of offshore detention, with the left-wing Labor Party now unwilling to drift too far from this new “norm,” lest it be labeled weak on border security. Having backed itself into a corner, the government now has to convince other nations to take its detainees in order to free them—something the U.S. is taking part in under refugee exchanges, although it has rejected up to 300 so far.
It’s not too late for the U.S. to avoid this path. As Jason Wilson wrote in the Guardian just a few days before Trump drew the comparison, “Australia’s camps are now baked into its national politics. … The longer that they are in place in the US, Italy and elsewhere, the more likely it is that in those countries, too, they will become permanent features of the political landscape.”
At first, the U.S. left seemed to be doing a good job at this—something Australia could learn from. The left rallied fiercely against the Trump administration family separation policy when it first came out that children were being kept in detention facilities, forcing Trump to sign a June 2018 executive order putting an end to the practice. At the time, the hearteningly effective use of protest made me sad about Australia’s own failure to mobilize effectively or early enough against its now-ingrained inhumane policies.
However, after Trump signed the executive order, returning many traumatized children to their families, that outrage seemed to simmer out—despite hundreds of children remaining in detention. Recent weeks have seen the issue reenter the public consciousness, with the discovery that many more children were separated than first thought, and an inspection of a Clint, Texas, detainment center revealing appalling conditions. There has been a renewed push, led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to again label these kinds of camps “concentration camps,” which, accurate or not, has reenergized opposition to them and turned the facilities into a central issue for 2020 Democratic candidates. But outrage fatigue is real, and the second rarely matches the first. Australia may be beyond the capacity to feel outrage at this point, with reports of a mental health crisis—dozens of detainee suicide attempts and acts of self-harm since the unexpected reelection of Australia’s conservative government in May—barely moving the needle.
There are also lessons for the U.S. media to be taken from Australia. It is essential that journalists keep reporting on and scrutinizing the horrific conditions in these detention facilities and keep finding ways to get the message across. But perhaps most importantly, they need to fight any efforts to impose laws or policies banning access to the centers for journalists and advocates, as the Australian government did in 2015, passing the draconian Australian Border Force Act, which made it a criminal offense for whistleblowers to reveal anything that happens in the detention centers to the media. Journalists have little access themselves, with the Pacific nations that house Australia’s detention centers refusing almost all journalist visa requests—something that Australia is believed to have had a hand in. For the most part, all the Australian public now gets from inside these camps are rare leaked recordings and the Twitter feeds of prominent detainees. Australian journalists and advocates fought this law, and I don’t mean to demean or question their efforts here. But it’s important for the U.S. media to take heed. Images and reports have proved incredibly potent in swaying public opinion, and so, from Trump’s perspective, a lesson here might be to implement something similar.
There are lessons, too, for Democrats to learn from Australia’s major left party, the Labor Party, not to bow to public pressure to be “strong” and “tough” on border control. Despite recent efforts to provide some relief, in the form of a bill allowing for the temporary transfer of detainees to Australia for medical or psychiatric treatment passed in Parliament with the support of Labor and a number of independents, Labor has proved spineless on the issue, with mandatory offshore detention now more or less a bipartisan policy.
Many in the party may oppose the practice, but overall, Labor is afraid to differentiate itself from the right, lest it be labeled weak on national security—something the coalition has attempted to do in the wake of Labor showing the smallest ounce of compassion in helping pass the medical transfer bill. Democrats need to decide how they intend to fight this system, rather than just try to alleviate some of the suffering it creates. Some argue that billions in emergency funding for the southern border only props up the system, advancing a fundamentally inhumane set of policies.
Trump’s desire to “learn” from a horrific policy that has been repeatedly slammed by the U.N. Human Rights Council is hardly surprising. But for once, he’s right—in a sense. There are many lessons to be learned from Australia. The most important? Take note of them before a system becomes seemingly too ingrained to do much about it.
