Month: June 2017

Trump ‘Believes Climate Is Changing,’ Haley Tells CNN

Posted on by SeeUS

U.S. President Donald Trump “believes the climate is changing,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley says.

“President Trump believes the climate is changing and he believes pollutants are part of the equation,” Haley said during an excerpt of a CNN interview released Saturday. The interview will be broadcast Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.

On Thursday, Trump announced the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate change pact, tapping into his “America First” campaign theme. He said participating in the pact would undermine the U.S. economy, wipe out jobs, weaken national sovereignty and put his country at a permanent disadvantage.

On Friday, nobody at the White House was able to say whether Trump believed in climate change. In recent years, he has expressed skepticism about whether climate change is real, sometimes calling it a hoax. But since becoming president, he has not offered an opinion.
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Iraqi Forces Bogged Down Against IS in Old Mosul

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Despite vowing that a renewed offensive against Islamic State in Mosul will be a “final push,” Iraqi forces continue to get bogged down in ancient parts of the city where IS remains entrenched.

Days after beginning the latest offensive, the U.S.-backed forces slowed operations late last week, citing the difficulty of protecting residents trapped in remaining IS-controlled areas. Commanders admit the fight for Mosul will take longer than anticipated.

“We are fighting a very difficult battle,” Iraqi Major General Najim Abdullah al-Jubouri told VOA. “It will take at least another month before we liberate the Old City because IS is using civilians as human shields.”

Al-Jubouri said his forces halted their offensive temporarily to open new safe passage routes for civilians fleeing their homes to cross government lines.

“We need to review our plans frequently to change some routes and move to different places based on where fighting is most severe,” he said.

The Iraqi commander said 200 foreign fighters and up to 1,000 local members of IS hold less than 10-square kilometers of Mosul in three neighborhoods to the north of the Old City, as well as inside the Old City itself where there is a dense civilian population.

The United Nations estimates that nearly 200,000 people are facing severe shortages of water and food, and are in danger from crossfire and airstrikes.

“We feel those civilians are probably at greater risk now than at any stage of the entire campaign,” Lise Grande, the U.N.’s top humanitarian official in Iraq, told reporters last week.

The complex maze of the Old City makes evacuating civilians increasingly harder, Iraqi and U.S. officials say. The ancient city was built during the Ottoman Empire and includes the eight-century old al-Nouri mosque where IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared IS’s self-proclaimed caliphate in 2014. Its narrow alleys prevent the Iraqi forces from bringing in tanks and armored vehicles.

“Liberating these final neighborhoods will be among the most difficult fighting the ISF has faced in their campaign to defeat IS,” U.S. Col. Ryan Dillon, spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition against IS, said last week, using an acronym for Iraqi forces.

Dillon said coalition planes conducted 21 strikes in the past week targeting different IS positions and destroying more than 120 vehicles.

IS militants who took control of Mosul in June 2014 have had years to prepare their defense inside the city.

“They have stationed snipers in the buildings and the minarets of mosques where they fire down on the Iraqi forces,” Gayath Surchi, speaker of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party in Mosul told VOA. “They have put civilians in the basements to prevent being hit by airstrikes.”

IS has erected barricades, placed car bombs, and planted mines throughout the city, Surchi said.

“Street combat would have been tough even if there were no civilians,” he said. “Some streets have walls that are one meter thick and made of massive stones and cement.”

Experts say even after IS is pushed from Mosul, its remnants and sleeper cells will continue operating in the city.

“They will definitely continue asymmetric warfare tactics,” Ahmad Majidyar, an expert at the Middle East Institute, told VOA. “They will continue to destabilize Mosul in order to create mayhem to prevent any post-conflict reconstruction and undermine the rule of the government.”
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Anti-Trump Protesters Demand Impartial Russia Probe

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Protests were under way Saturday in more than 135 cities in the U.S. and abroad to demand an impartial investigation into possible collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia to influence last year’s election in Trump’s favor.

The “March for Truth” protests were organized by a national coalition of 17 activist groups, including the Women’s March and the Progressive Democrats of America.

The coalition is demanding the establishment of an independent commission to oversee an impartial probe and that ongoing congressional investigations be “properly resourced and free of partisan interests.”

WATCH:  Protesters chant demanding justice

There are four congressional investigations of possible Trump campaign links to Russia and Moscow’s meddling in the election. In addition, the Justice Department appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as a special counsel to probe whether Trump campaign aides illegally colluded with Russia.

The investigations were launched after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded Russia hacked the computer servers of the Democratic National Committee last year to harm the campaign of Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton, who political analysts say, Russian President Vladimir Putin despised.

Trump has rejected allegations of collusion and dismissed the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Putin ordered an influence campaign aimed at disrupting the November election. Putin has repeated there is no evidence of Kremlin involvement in the election.

“March for Truth” organizers are also demanding that Trump release his personal tax returns. Trump has repeatedly refused to disclose them, raising the ire of critics who contend his refusal leaves citizens without information regarding his potential conflicts of interest or how his proposed tax policy overhaul may help enrich himself. There is no law compelling a U.S. president to release tax returns.

The “March for Truth” is the latest in a number of weekend anti-Trump protests since his election, including the Women’s March in January and the March for Science in April.

Pro-Trump protesters

Supporters of the president also took to the streets Saturday. A “Pittsburgh, not Paris” rally is being held in Lafayette Square across from the White House in celebration of the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate accord.

“As you know, the president has been under siege from the mainstream media and the Democrats, especially now that he put American jobs first by withdrawing from the Paris accord,” reads an invitation to the rally issued by the president’s campaign. “Therefore, we are organizing a group to demonstrate our support for President Trump and his fearless leadership,” it added.

WATCH: Pro-Trump protesters chant near White House

Trump announced Thursday his decision to pull out of the global climate agreement, joining Syria and Nicaragua as the only countries that are not part of the Paris agreement.
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Egypt, Sudan Downplay Strains After High Level Visit

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Ties between Egypt and Sudan appeared to be on the mend Saturday, following a belated visit to Cairo by Sudanese Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour. Ghandour had been scheduled to meet with top Egyptian officials earlier in the week, but the visit was postponed amid a public spat between the presidents of both countries over the imposition of visas on Egyptian nationals.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir had accused Egypt last month of supporting armed militants in both South Sudan and Darfour, claiming that Egypt had supplied them with armored vehicles. Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sissi denied the claim, while Egyptian media accused Sudan of supporting terrorists in southern Libya following a recent terror attack, which left several dozen Coptic Christians dead in the south of the country.

Ghandour told a news conference following his meeting with President Sissi that it was difficult for a country like Sudan, with lengthy borders, to control everything that was flowing in and out of the country, but that joint efforts are being made with Khartoum’s neighbors to prevent terrorists from infiltrating.

He says that Egypt and Sudan share a 1200 kilometer land border and that it is virtually impossible to patrol the entire length of it. But, he insists, Khartoum is proposing to Egypt similar arrangements that it has with neighbors Chad and Ethiopia to set up joint border patrols to monitor what is going in and out. He argues that such an agreement with Chad has reduced the flow of (militants) in and out of the country.

Ghandour noted that trade and consular disputes between both countries were also being studied by joint delegations to try and resolve them. He claimed that the imposition of visas on Egyptian nationals stemmed from Egyptian complaints about the flow of terrorists into Sudan. It was not clear if any progress was made in resolving the dispute, however.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukri, for his part, tried to downplay recent friction between the two sides, arguing that both countries were trying to “open a new page in cultural, security and economic relations”:

He says that Egypt has absolutely no interest in doing anything that would harm Sudan, and that a strong Sudan was in Egypt’s interest and vice versa.

Ghandour said that the peoples of both countries have a “long history of friendship,” and he urged both sides “not to do anything that would poison the relations between our two peoples.” Both Egypt and Sudan were united under the Egyptian monarchy, which was deposed by a revolution led by Egyptian military officers in 1952. Sudan officially became independent after a referendum in 1956.

Ghandour told journalists that both Egyptian President Sisi and Sudanese President Bashir had met 18 times in recent years, which he stressed is more than the leaders of any other neighboring states.

Ties between Egypt and Sudan have also been strained in recent years over an Ethiopian project to build a dam on the Nile River. Egypt is concerned that dam’s construction and the filling of an artificial lake behind it will lessen the water flow of the Nile, harming Egyptian agriculture and the country’s vital water needs.

Egypt points to an international agreement under British colonial rule, which guaranteed it the lion’s share of the Nile’s waters. Ethiopia and nations upstream have argued that the agreement was unfair and needs to be revised.
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Thousands Rally in N. Morocco After Protest Leader Arrested

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Several thousand people protested in a provincial northern Moroccan town to demand the authorities release an activist arrested for leading months of demonstrations against official abuses and corruption.

The protest took place late on Friday in the town of Al-Hoceima where tensions have run high since activist Nasser Zefzafi was detained at the start of the week and charged with threatening national security, among other offenses.

Political unrest is rare in the North African kingdom but protests around Al-Hoceima have been simmering since October after a fishmonger was crushed inside a garbage truck while trying to salvage his fish that had been confiscated by police.

Chanting “the people demand prisoners be freed” and “we are all Zefzafi” several thousand people gathered in Al-Hoceima’s Sidi Abed square late on Friday night. Some protesters put tape on their mouths and tied their hands to symbolize arrests.

“Nasser defended his rights, he defended our rights, he’s our hero. He did nothing to deserve arrest,” said Zahya Al-Hassani, a mother of four.

Many carried flags representing the Rif region, which has a history of dissent and once declared brief independence under a local Berber leader in the 1920s during war with colonial Spanish forces.

Authorities placed a heavy police presence around the town and the square, where protesters said they had prevented a larger crowd from forming. Hours early in nearby Imzouren, police fired water cannon to disperse hundreds of protesters who clashed with security forces, tossing rocks and rubble.

Fishmonger Mouhcine Fikri’s death has become a symbol for frustrations about official abuses and revived the spirit of the February 20 movement that led pro-democracy rallies in 2011 and prompted King Mohammed VI to cede some of his powers.

“We never imagined Fikri’s death would reach this point. The people are angry,” said Suleiman Ben Kadder, who said he knew the fishmonger at the port where he worked.

While some anger in the Al-Hoceima protests has been directed at “Makhzen”, the royal governing establishment, the unrest in northern Morocco, as in 2011, has not been aimed at the king. Morocco has a deeply rooted monarchy, the Muslim world’s longest-serving dynasty.

But the unrest around Al-Hoceima and the Rif region is testing nerves in a kingdom that presents itself as a model for stability and steady reform, as well as a safe haven for foreign investment in a region widely torn by militant violence.

 
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Facts Muddy Trump’s Claim That US is Cleanest Country

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President Donald Trump said the United States “will continue to be the cleanest and most environmentally friendly country on Earth” as he announced a U.S. pullout from an international accord designed to curb climate change.

 

But facts muddy that claim.

 

Data show that the U.S. is among the dirtiest countries when it comes to heat-trapping carbon pollution. One nation that has cleaner air in nearly every way is Sweden.

 

“The U.S. is well behind other countries in having the cleanest and most sustainable environment,” University of Michigan environmental scientist Rosina Bierbaum said in an email.

 

The U.S. emits more carbon dioxide than any other nation except China. In 2014, the U.S. spewed 237 times more carbon dioxide into the air than Sweden, according to figures by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

 

“On pretty much any climate-related indicator, the U.S. will not look good,” said Glen Peters, a Norwegian climate scientist who is part of the Global Carbon Project that ranks worldwide emissions.

 

The U.S. is No. 2 in per person carbon dioxide pollution, behind Luxembourg, among 35 developed nations plus China, India and Brazil, Energy Department data show. That’s 19.1 tons (17.3 metric tons) of carbon dioxide per year for the average American, compared with 4.9 tons (4.5 metric tons) for the average Swede.

 

Taking into account economics, the U.S. ranks 10th highest in carbon pollution per gross domestic product behind China, India, Russia, Estonia, Poland, South Korea, the Czech Republic, Mexico and Turkey, according to the International Energy Agency . The U.S. spews almost five times more carbon dioxide per dollar in the economy than Sweden.

 

Because carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for more than a century, scientists and regulators say it’s more important to look at historical emissions. Since 1870, the U.S. has produced about one-quarter of the world’s carbon dioxide – twice as much as China – and that makes it the biggest polluter in the world by far, Peters said.

 

In some traditional air pollution measurements, the United States is cleaner than most nations, said William K. Reilly, who headed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under Republican President George H.W. Bush.

 

But “when the problem he is dealing with is carbon dioxide, we are notably not better than the rest of the world,” said Reilly, adding that Trump is “just wrong.”

 

The U.S. is better than most of the world when it comes to dangerous soot or fine particles. Among industrialized countries, the U.S. tied for sixth cleanest, according to the Health Effects Institute.

 

It’s also tied for sixth smoggiest in the world with Turkey, according to the institute .

 

“There are a number of countries that have cleaner air in terms of major industrial nations. We are certainly in the top core,” said Dan Greenbaum, the group’s president. “Clearly, countries like China and India are much, much worse than we are.”

 

The U.S. leads in helping people fight for a clean environment by having laws and procedures that allow citizens to sue to enforce pollution protections and get information, said Princeton University climate scientist and international affairs professor Michael Oppenheimer.

 

Other countries are far ahead of the U.S. in cleaner energy, especially Germany, which on occasion is fueled fully by renewables, Oppenheimer said.

 

Reilly, the former EPA head, recalled how the U.S. took environmental leadership 25 years ago this month as it became the first industrial country to ratify the first climate treaty.

 

“Now we turn the page,” Reilly said.”We’ll see where it goes.”

 
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NY Times: Trump Not Planning to Invoke Executive Privilege for Comey Testimony

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U.S. President Donald Trump reportedly does not plan to invoke executive privilege in an attempt to prevent former FBI director James Comey from disclosing potentially harmful information to Congress about statements Trump made about his embattled former national security director.

The decision was reported by the New York Times, which attributed information about the decision to unnamed senior officials with the Trump administration.

On Saturday, a White House spokesperson directed a question about the New York Times report to outside counsel — which did not immediately respond to a request comment.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters Friday he was unaware if the president would try to block Comey’s testimony.

“I have not spoken to counsel yet. I don’t know how they’re going to respond,” Spicer said.

As FBI director, Comey was leading the agency’s probe into Russian interference in last year’s presidential election and into whether Trump campaign aides illegally colluded with Russia before Trump fired Comey last month.

The former FBI chief is scheduled to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is also conducting an investigation into the election and possible collusion.

Comey is expected to tell lawmakers about several discussions he had with Trump, including one during which the president urged him to stop investigating former national security advisor Michael Flynn. Trump fired Flynn in February amid reports that Flynn had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the United States.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is one of four congressional probes into possible Trump campaign ties to Russia and Moscow’s meddling in the election. In addition, the Justice Department appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as a special counsel to investigate whether Trump campaign aides illegally colluded with Russia.

The investigations began after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded Russia hacked Democratic National Committee computer servers last year with the intent of inflicting damage on the campaign of Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton, who political analysts say, Russian President Vladimir Putin despised.

Trump has dismissed allegations of collusion and the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Putin ordered an influence campaign aimed at disrupting the November election. Putin has repeated there is no evidence of Kremlin involvement in the election.
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Tillerson to Tackle Regional Challenges on First Trip to South Pacific

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The United States is enlisting its Oceania allies to tackle growing threats from North Korea and counter increasing Chinese influence in the Asia-Pacific region, U.S. officials and experts say.

 

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis are departing for Australia for annual ministerial consultations on June 5, aimed at deepening cooperation on “bilateral, regional and global” issues.

 

The top American diplomat will then travel to New Zealand June 6 to “reaffirm strong ties and cooperative coordination on shared peaceful interests” with that country, according to the State Department.

 

“We’ll be looking at ways in which we can more effectively counter the provocations that the North Koreans are making and find more effective ways of increasing pressure on them to get them back onto a constructive path of denuclearization,” State Department Deputy Assistance Secretary Matt Matthews told VOA during a telephone briefing Thursday.

 

Matthews says the Australia-United States Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) meeting has been the principal forum for consultations between the two governments since 1985 in order to address “critical challenges.”

Frequent missile tests

Next week’s talks come amid North Korea’s increasingly frequent missile tests and most recently, a short-range ballistic missile launch that Pyongyang called a success on Monday.

 

Regional experts told VOA that while the ministerial consultations with Australia and New Zealand are conducted regularly, President Donald Trump’s administration is sending a clear message that Washington will “continue the alliance relationship.”

 

The U.S. also is looking for assurance from both governments to “continue promoting maritime security cooperation in the waters near Australia and extending into the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea,” Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Pacific Forum Program Director Carl Baker told VOA.

 

The State Department says Washington and Canberra share an interest in maintaining freedom of navigation and overflight and other lawful uses of the sea, including the South China Sea.

 

“Chinese military and economic expansion, as well as the North Korean nuclear threat, pose a challenge to American interests in the Asia-Pacific region and the world,“ nominee for U.S. ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa Scott Brown told American lawmakers in a written statement.

China, North Korea

During his recent nomination hearing, Brown told the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations that “the expansionism of China” and “the belligerence of North Korea” are two important areas that he will focus on when working with New Zealand.

 

Brown’s nomination was cleared by the committee on May 25 and now goes to the full Senate for a vote.

 

The U.S. and Australia regularly engage in a security dialogue with Japan to counter North Korea’s nuclear proliferation.

 

The U.S.-Australia Force Posture Agreement, signed in 2014, paved the way for close defense and security cooperation, including the enhanced rotations of U.S. Air Force aircraft to Australia.
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Malta Votes in Election Tied to Panama Papers Scandal

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Maltese voters went to the polls a year early Saturday in a snap election called by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat following an official investigation into allegations his wife owned a company related to the Panama Papers scandal.

Surveys showed Labour Party’s Muscat was likely to win a second, five-year term. But polls indicated one-fifth of voters were undecided, giving the National Force made up of the Nationalist Party and newly formed Democratic Party a slight chance.

The Panama Papers scandal, which detailed offshore companies and other financial data of the rich and powerful, exposed Malta’s energy minister and Muscat’s chief of staff as having acquired a company in Panama.

Muscat called new elections and ordered a magisterial inquiry midway through Malta’s first-ever stint at the presidency of the European Council after allegations surfaced in April that his wife also owned a company in Panama. The Muscats deny the allegations.

Setting up an offshore company is not illegal or evidence of illegal conduct, but shell companies can be used to avoid taxes or launder money.

After the publication of the Panama Papers last year, Muscat was criticized for retaining Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi and chief of staff Keith Schembri, whose names figured in the document dump. They acknowledged that they acquired the companies but deny wrongdoing.

Since then, two other magisterial inquiries have been opened after money laundering and kickback allegations were made against Schembri by opposition Nationalist leader Simon Busuttil. Schembri denies any wrongdoing.

None of the investigations had finished before Saturday’s vote.

During the campaign, Busuttil, Muscat’s prime challenger, charged that accusations of corruption had hurt Malta’s financial services industry and would continue to damage the island’s reputation.
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Tanzania Prepares for Worsening Effects of Climate Change

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Tanzania aims to better protect its city dwellers from floods and other climate-related threats through an urban resilience program launched this week.

The initiative comes as the country is grappling with the worsening impacts of climate change, such as frequent flooding and recurring drought.

More than half the world’s population now lives in cities, and the United Nations projects that share will rise to 66 percent by 2050, with close to 90 percent of the increase taking place in urban areas of Africa and Asia.

While this growth will globally create wealth and reduce poverty, analysts say many cities are increasingly vulnerable to flooding, putting lives and property at risk.

Threatened by flooding 

In East Africa, Tanzania is bearing the heaviest burden of flooding, which threatens infrastructure assets worth $5.3 billion in Dar es Salaam, the World Bank said at the launch of Tanzania’s urban program Wednesday.

Home to more than 4.5 million people, the nation’s commercial capital is vulnerable to flooding, which cripples the ability of poorer city residents to access clean water and better sanitation, officials said.

The new initiative, a collaboration between Britain’s Department for International Development, the World Bank and the Tanzanian government, aims to find ways to cushion people from weather-related disasters, such as identifying flood-prone areas and drawing up preparedness plans.

Moses Msuya, director of the disaster management department in the Prime Minister’s Office, said the program includes strategic actions, such as installing early warning systems, to boost Tanzania’s ability to respond to disasters and help people recover rapidly.

“Let us make good use of every opportunity to make our cities more resilient for people now and for our children’s future,” he said.

According to Msuya, many Tanzanian cities are at risk of flooding because of poor infrastructure, including a lack of storm drainage canals.

“Rapid urbanization is increasing our vulnerability to climate-related risks. Our cities have undergone massive spatial expansion with the majority of residents living in unplanned settlements,” he said.

According to the World Bank, the program will use scientific methods to evaluate risks, and install early warning and monitoring equipment to prepare vulnerable communities for emergencies.

“No disaster is entirely natural,” said Edward Anderson, a disaster risk management specialist with the World Bank. “Disaster itself is often a failure in development planning.”

Teaching resilience

As part of its strategy, the government will develop a “Resilience Academy,” in which the concept of resilience will be taught at university level to help younger generations tackle natural disasters and other threats, officials said.

Osiligi Lossai, local ward official for the Tandale neighborhood of Dar es Salaam, said flood risks are more severe in crowded slum areas like his.

“My people have suffered a lot, and they keep incurring huge losses every single year,” he said.

According to a recent World Bank report on greening Africa’s cities, protecting fast-degrading environments in growing cities like Dar es Salaam can make them more liveable, and help them cope with extreme weather.

“Restoring forest areas and rehabilitating river systems could alleviate urban flooding problems, and make cities more pleasant and productive places to live,” Bella Bird, the World Bank’s country director for Tanzania, told the urban program launch.
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This Year, No US Pressure to Avoid Russia’s Davos

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For three years after Russia annexed Crimea, Washington officials quietly cautioned major U.S. firms about attending the annual St. Petersburg forum, where investors mingle with President Vladimir Putin and his lieutenants.

This year, the first forum since Donald Trump became U.S. president, such cautions were not issued, according to four people familiar with preparations for U.S. companies to attend.

Washington’s policy toward Russia is essentially unchanged under Trump, with the United States committed to maintaining sanctions on Moscow unless it complies with international demands about Ukraine.

Change in tone

But its approach this year to the St. Petersburg event — often described as Russia’s version of the Davos forum in Switzerland — reveals a change in tone, according to some people who follow U.S.-Russia trade relations.

Daniel Russell, the head of the U.S.-Russia business council, when asked if U.S. companies were feeling less pressure from the administration to stay away, said: “I think that’s right.

“Some of the companies, particularly in 2015, received calls from the U.S. government not to attend and I think that attitude has certainly changed,” he said.

The change in tone fits with promises Trump made during his election campaign to pursue friendlier ties with Russia.

Any sign of warming toward the Kremlin is highly sensitive for the White House, since Congress and the FBI are conducting inquiries into whether members of the Trump team had improper contacts with Russian officials before Trump’s inauguration.

Trump has denied doing anything wrong.

Asked about contacts with companies planning to attend the forum, a State Department spokesperson said: “We have an open dialogue with the business community, and ultimately companies are free to make their own decisions, in line with applicable laws and regulations.”

The forum in St Petersburg was in its second day Friday and there were signs of a more substantial U.S. presence than in previous years since the March 2014 annexation of Crimea.

US ambassador attends

U.S. ambassador to Russia John Tefft was at the forum, though he did not have a speaking slot. No U.S. ambassador attended in 2014, 2015 or 2016.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. embassy in Moscow said his attendance was a routine part of his ambassadorial duties.

Major U.S. companies who sent senior executives, including oil major Exxon, Boeing, Chevron and JPMorgan, were represented at a similar level to last year, but several delegates at the forum said they estimated the U.S. presence to be numerically bigger than in previous years.

“We see a much larger number of people from the U.S., Canada,” said Kirill Dmitriev, chief executive of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, a state body that works with foreign investors.

“There is a better understanding (among foreign investors) that sanctions really did not work, the Russian economy continues to grow, Russia represents an attractive market and people should work with Russia,” he told Reuters.

Russian economy growing

Several U.S. delegates said that, politics aside, they were drawn to the forum by the fact the Russian economy had returned to growth after a slowdown.

The forum is a prestige project for Putin, a native of St. Petersburg. Foreign executives typically use their presence to signal to the Kremlin their enthusiasm for investing in Russia.

In 2014, when the Ukraine crisis first started, U.S. Cabinet officials including Secretary of State John Kerry made personal calls to chief executives of U.S. firms asking them not to attend, said a former U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The next year, senior U.S. officials below Cabinet level were charged with persuading American executives not to attend, and in 2016, U.S. officials brought up the issue in a low-level manner, the former official said.

The account of those conversations was confirmed by a second former official who served in the administration of former U.S. President Barack Obama.

The guidance in later years was not necessarily to stay away, but that executives who did attend should keep their presence low-key, said several other people familiar with the discussions.

Ian Colebourne, who is CEO for Deloitte in the Commonwealth of Independent States and sits on the U.S.-Russia business council, said he was aware of officials giving guidance to executives in previous years, but added: “I haven’t heard anything this year.”

Two other sources familiar with the preparations for U.S. companies to attend also said there had been no guidance before this year’s forum, in contrast to previous years.

Green light?

The lack of contact from the U.S. government this year is being interpreted among business executives as meaning: “You can go,” said one of the two sources.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce did not receive any guidance from the administration about whether or not to participate in the event, a source with the Chamber said.

Still, some companies that did attend exercised caution, keeping a low profile.

The head of U.S. oil giant Exxon Mobil, Darren Woods, did not join the table of panelists at the main oil session of the forum. It was chaired by the head of Kremlin oil major Rosneft, Igor Sechin, who is on the U.S. sanctions list.

Like his predecessor as Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, now Trump’s Secretary of State, Woods made only brief remarks from the floor in a discussion about the energy industry.

Among other U.S. companies at the forum, JPMorgan Chase & Co., sent Daniel Pinto, Chief Executive Officer of its corporate and investment business, while Boeing sent Bertrand-Marc Allen, president of its international arm.

U.S. oil major Chevron sent its vice president for business development, Jay Pryor. He was also at the forum last year. A company representative did not reply to questions about any guidance from the administration.

“Let’s say the seniority of some of the teams is more senior this year, certainly compared to some prior years and that’s a positive sign,” Deloitte’s Colebourne said of the U.S corporate presence.

Robert Dudley, chief executive of BP, a British company with substantial business in the United States, said his impression was that this year there were more representatives of U.S. companies at the forum than previously.

“That would suggest they are not feeling that kind of pressure,” to curb their presence, he said.
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UN Chief to Name ex-German President as Western Sahara Envoy

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The head of the United Nations will name former German president Horst Koehler as his new envoy for Western Sahara, in charge of restarting talks between Morocco and the Polisario independence movement over the disputed territory.

The United Nations Security Council in April backed attempts to re-enter negotiations over Western Sahara, which has been contested since 1975 and where Morocco and Polisario fought a war until a 1991 ceasefire.

“Following the usual consultations, I intend to appoint Horst Koehler of Germany as my personal envoy for Western Sahara,” U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in a letter to the Security Council released by the U.N. on Friday.

Tensions increased in Western Sahara last year when Moroccan forces faced off with a brigade of Polisario forces in the remote Guerguerat area near the Mauritania border. Both sides withdrew their forces this year.

Before serving as Germany’s president from 2004 to 2010, Koehler was managing director of the International Monetary Fund. He also has worked for the U.N. in development programs and on a panel for the African Development Bank.

 

Morocco claimed Western Sahara after former colonial power Spain left, but Polisario fought a guerrilla war for independence for the Sahrawi people there until the U.N.-backed ceasefire.

U.N. talks have failed to broker an agreement on how to decide on self-determination. Morocco wants an autonomy plan under Moroccan sovereignty. But the Polisario wants a U.N.-backed referendum that would include the question of independence.

Relations between Morocco and the U.N. hit a low last year after then-U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon used the word “occupation” to describe Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara.

Morocco expelled dozens of U.N. staff working for the mission there known as MINURSO.

Guterres on Friday expressed concern over the plight of tens of thousands of Sahrawi refugees in Algeria who will see their food rations cut due to lack of funding, his spokesman, Farhan Haq, told reporters.

“Humanitarian aid, including food aid, is a lifeline for these refugees from Western Sahara,” Haq said. “The secretary-general calls on donors to urgently increase their assistance to this often overlooked and vulnerable population.”

Haq said the World Food Program needs $7.9 million to continue providing food assistance over the next six months.
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What’s Truly Italian? Food Fight Foils ‘Made in Italy’ Plan

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For the Italian government, it seemed like a recipe for success: create an official “Made in Italy” logo to defend the country’s finest food exports from an army of foreign impersonators.

On supermarket shelves worldwide, a star-shaped logo would mark out real Italian cheeses, hams, pasta and sparkling wines from those that only look or sound Italian, such as Parmesan made in New Zealand or Prosecco bottled in Brazil.

But Rome has discovered that even the simplest recipe can go wrong. Instead of unifying Italy’s food industry against a common enemy that is bagging billions of euros in sales, the government’s proposal for a Made in Italy certification quickly created bitter divisions.

A row has erupted over what it means to be truly Italian — should every single raw ingredient be made in Italy, for example — and now the project could be ditched altogether for lack of an industry consensus, according to two industry ministry sources who declined to be named as talks with food firms are ongoing.

“For now there is no final decision on whether to go ahead with the Made in Italy sign, we are studying it, we are doing technical checks,” said one of the sources, an industry ministry official who is working on the project.

“We will launch it only if it fully meets the requests of producers,” he said, adding that the food industry was split into several groups with conflicting views on the project.

The ministry announced the project at the end of last year, and began consultations with food producers in March, in response to industry complaints that foreign-made foods masquerading as Italian produce were costing the country billions of euros in lost export sales.

A logo guaranteeing Italian origin would enable exporters to grab some of the roughly 60 billion euros ($67 billion) in annual global sales generated by foreign imitations, according to Italy’s food producers’ lobby, Federalimentare.

Marketing experts agree. Brand Finance, a global consultancy that compiles an index of the world’s most valuable brands, estimates it could add up to 5 percent to the enterprise value of small- and medium-sized Italian food companies.

“Domestic companies would surely gain from such a logo given that Italy has a high reputation in the food sector and many of them are not well known outside the country,” said Massimo Pizzo, Italy managing director for Brand Finance.

However, Federalimentare’s members could not agree on a definition of Italian-made. Some took a hard line, insisting products be made entirely in Italy from ingredients sourced at home, while others argued for a less stringent approach.

‘If we open the door’

The consortium of producers of Parmigiano Reggiano, the king of Italian cheeses, insists on rigid standards for everyone.

“If we open the door to products with foreign ingredients, we are not talking of real Made in Italy … this is not the kind of help we are looking for,” said Riccardo Deserti, chairman of the consortium.

Under the consortium’s rules, recognized across the European Union, cheese can only be marketed as Parmigiano Reggiano, or by its English name Parmesan, if it is made according to a precise method within a restricted area around the town of Parma.

The consortium of Prosecco wine producers takes a similar stance, rejecting the idea of being put in the same authenticity category as products made with foreign raw materials.

On the other hand, some firms believe traditional Italian production methods should be enough to qualify for the logo.

Barilla, the world’s biggest pasta maker, wants to carry the Made in Italy logo though 16 of its 30 plants are abroad, including in the United States and Russia.

“We are Italian, we pay taxes in Italy and we run our foreign plants following the rules of the Italian quality,” Paolo Barilla, vice chairman of the family-owned business, told a food conference in March. A Barilla spokesman declined to make any further comment for this story.

One of Italy’s most identifiable food brands, the high-end food chain Eataly, draws a finer line on the issue.

It recently opened its first store in Moscow where an embargo on some European food imports forced it to make some cheeses from local ingredients. It sells mozzarella and burrata made in Russia, but not Parmigiano.

Olive and oak

Italian food producers can at least agree on one thing: Foreign rivals are competing unfairly by marketing distinctly Italian products, using words and symbols that suggest an Italian origin but listing the real provenance in fine print.

They point the finger at goods such as New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra’s Perfect Italiano range of Parmesan and Mozzarella cheeses or Garibaldi Prosecco made in Brazil by the Garibaldi Winery Cooperative.

“I totally agree with the idea of a Made in Italy sign,” Eataly founder Oscar Farinetti told Reuters at the inauguration of the store, but did not say whether he sided with the Italian-made purists or the likes of Barilla.

Contacted by Reuters, a Fonterra spokesperson said the group markets the two cheeses using their Italian names and featuring the Italian flag because they were launched by Natale Italiano, an Italian who migrated to Australia in the 1920s.

“While the brand is proud of its heritage, its packaging is evolving away from featuring the Italian flag,” Fonterra said.

The group did not disclose the turnover of the Perfect Italiano products.

Garibaldi Winery did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

The Rome government had proposed a Made in Italy logo employing the symbols of the Italian republic: a star framed by olive and oak branches.

The project, however, was constrained by EU rules.

The government planned to include products if their last “significant transformation” happened in Italy, the ministry official said — meaning, for example, sausages produced in Italy using imported meat would qualify for the label while ham made in a foreign plant of an Italian producer would not.

This would bring the logo into line with the European Customs Code governing country-of-origin labeling, but the plan satisfied neither side in the food fight; the purists balked at the idea of foreign ingredients being allowed, while other firms argued the rules were too stringent.

Hence the impasse that threatens the project.

“Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t use a different standard from the one used in Europe,” said the source.
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DC Roundup: No Apology From EPA Chief, Effect on Africa, International Students in US

Posted on by SeeUS

Developments in Washington, D.C., on Friday include continuing discussion of President Donald Trump’s announcement to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, EPA Director Scott Pruitt says Americans should not apologize for Trump’s decision, Russian President Vladimir Putin urges U.S. businesses help normalize relations between the two countries, and U.S. educators say despite contrary signs, including a Trump administration proposed travel ban on majority-Muslim countries, America remains the top destination for international students:

Pruitt: Americans Should Not Apologize for Paris Accord Withdrawal — U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said Friday President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement was “courageous” and urged Americans not to apologize for the decision. “We have nothing to be apologetic about as a country,” Pruitt told reporters at a White House media briefing. He did not respond directly to a question about whether Trump believes human-caused global warming is a hoax, as Trump did during his presidential campaign, instead emphasizing the agreement “did put us at an economic disadvantage.”

World Leaders Express Dismay at US Withdrawal From Paris Accord — World leaders and environmental groups have expressed their disappointment with Trump’s decision to withdraw from the landmark Paris climate accord, the global effort to deal with the effects of climate change. French President Emmanuel Macron said in both French and English that he believed Trump has made a historic mistake. German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the Paris Accord a “historic quantum leap.”

EU, China Renew Commitment to Fight Climate Change — The European Union and China recommitted Friday to the 2015 Paris climate deal, one day after the United States announced it would withdraw from it. In a joint statement, the EU and China said climate change and clean energy “will become a main pillar” of their bilateral partnership. European Council President Donald Tusk said the fight against climate change would continue, with or without the United States.

Trump Climate Action Would Hurt Africa, Activists Say — Trump’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord could have a negative impact in Africa, say environmental activists on the continent. Saliem Fakir, head of the policy and futures unit of the World Wildlife Fund in South Africa, worries about the withdrawal of some $2 billion the U.S. was to contribute to the “Green Fund,” to help the developing world adopt climate-saving techniques and technologies.

Scientists Say Evidence Clearly Shows Climate is Changing — Reacting to Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the landmark Paris climate agreement, leading scientific organizations say evidence clearly shows the world’s climate is changing and urgent measures must be taken to slow the warming of the planet. The organizations say the scientific evidence is clear that human activity is behind the changing climate.

Watch: Trump Climate Accord

AP Fact Check: Holes in Trump’s Reasoning on Climate Pullout — Announcing that the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris climate accord, Trump misplaced the blame for what ails the coal industry and laid a shaky factual foundation for his decision. A look at some of the claims in a Rose Garden speech and an accompanying fact sheet about the deal to curtail emissions responsible for global warming.

California, Other States Vow to Lead as Trump Exits Climate Pact — State governors and city mayors were quick to claim the mantle of U.S. leadership in fighting climate change after Trump said on Thursday the country will pull out of the Paris climate agreement. The officials said they collectively could show the international community that the United States remained committed to cutting the emissions that scientists blame for global warming.

Putin Urges US Business to Help Normalize Russia-US Ties — Russian President Vladimir Putin urged U.S. business executives Friday to help improve U.S.-Russia relations that have reached “their lowest point since the Cold War”, a nearly 50-year period of East-West geopolitical tension that ended in 1991. “I want to pass the buck back to you. Help us to restore a normal political dialogue,” Putin said in a speech to senior U.S. business representatives during an economic forum in St. Petersburg.

White House May Return Diplomatic Compounds Seized From Russia — The Trump administration is considering handing back two Russian diplomatic compounds along the U.S. East Coast after they were seized last year as punishment against the country, according to a report.

Trump Signs Law-Enforcement Bills Into Law — The president has signed into law two bills enhancing benefits for law-enforcement officers and providing funds to encourage veterans of military service to join police forces. Trump signed the bills Friday in the Diplomatic Reception room of the White House.

Watch: US Still Top Destination for International Students

US Still Top Destination for International College Students — As California caps the number of international students at its public universities next year, educators worry that action and a Trump administration proposed travel ban on some Muslim-majority countries send the wrong signal to students overseas. Educators meeting in Los Angeles say the United States remains the destination of choice for the world’s students, despite unwelcoming signals.

UN: Iran is Complying with Nuclear Deal — Iran has kept advances in its nuclear program within the parameters set under the 2015 accord it signed with world powers, the United Nations’ atomic watchdog agency said Friday. A new International Atomic Energy Agency report says Iran has greatly reduced its nuclear activities and kept its stock of enriched uranium below the agreed upon limit.

Investors Bet Trump Climate Withdrawal to Boost US Drilling — The price of oil has fallen sharply as investors bet that Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement will increase the country’s oil and gas production.

US Trade Deficit Rises to Highest Level Since January — The U.S. trade deficit rose in April to the highest level since January. The politically sensitive trade gap with China registered a sharp increase. The Commerce Department said Friday that the U.S. trade gap in goods and services climbed 5.2 percent to $47.6 billion in April from March. Exports dropped 0.3 percent to $191 billion, pulled down by a drop in automotive exports. Imports rose 0.8 percent to $238.6 billion as Americans bought more foreign-made cellphones and other consumer goods.

Trump Faces Tough Task Unwinding Obama Cuba Policy — President Barack Obama’s 2014 opening with Cuba helped funnel American travel dollars into military-linked tourism conglomerates even as state security agents waged a fierce crackdown on dissent. The rapprochement also poured hundreds of millions in U.S. spending into privately owned businesses on the island and opened a new market for American corporations. This is the complex scenario facing Trump as Cuban-American legislators and lobbyists pressure him to fulfill his campaign promise to undo Obama’s deal with Cuba.

US Intelligence Chiefs to Testify on Foreign Surveillance Law — Top U.S. intelligence officials will testify before a Senate panel next week on the law governing the collection of foreign intelligence, parts of which are due to expire at the end of the year, the committee said on Friday. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers and Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee in both open public and closed-door hearings on Wednesday to discuss the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, the committee said in a statement.

Defense Secretary Mattis Seeks Continuity in Policy Toward Asia — The Trump administration is aiming for continuity in Asia policy, sticking broadly with the approach its predecessors have taken by emphasizing diplomacy and cooperation with allies, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Friday.

Watch: Griffin: ‘I Wish The President Would Govern’

Kathy Griffin Responds in Trump Decapitation Photo Controversy — American Comedian Kathy Griffin responded to mounting criticism against her after she published a photo of herself holding what resembled the severed head of Trump, accusing “a bunch of old white guys” of trying to silence her. During a news conference Friday, a teary-eyed Griffin accused the president and his allies, whom she referred to as “nut jobs,” of launching a campaign to get her fired from her jobs, simply because she is a woman.

More Griffin Shows Canceled as Backlash Over Trump Video Grows — Backlash against Griffin continued to grow with at least four theaters announcing Thursday that they had canceled her performances after the comedian posed with a likeness of Trump’s severed head. Venues in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania canceled November shows. The Community Arts Theater in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, posted on its website that the show had been dropped “due to the recent controversy surrounding Kathy Griffin and the concern for the safety and security of our patrons and staff.”

Next EU Presidency: Nations Moving Toward NATO Spending Goal — The leader of the next European Union presidency says that several EU nations which were publicly scolded by Trump about their defense expenditure will be reaching a key NATO target next year. Estonian Prime Minister Juri Ratas said in an interview with The Associated Press on Friday that NATO nations spending 2 percent of gross domestic product could almost double from the current five to possibly nine by the end of 2018, including two other Baltic nations, Latvia and Lithuania.
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US Military Sees Climate Change as Threat to Security

Posted on by SeeUS

U.S. President Donald Trump relies far more than his recent predecessors on advisers with a military background, but his apparent disregard for climate science is at odds with the U.S. military’s consensus on the risks of climate change to security.

Over the last decade, the U.S. military and intelligence officials have developed a broad agreement about the security threats that climate change presents, in part by threatening to cause natural disasters in densely populated coastal areas, damage American military bases worldwide and open up new natural resources to global competition.

Watch: Trump: I Was Elected To Represent ‘Citizens of Pittsburgh, Not Paris’

President focuses on jobs

In his comments Thursday announcing he had decided to pull out of the Paris climate agreement, Trump focused on economic issues, arguing that abandoning the deal would save manufacturing and mining jobs that he views as crucial to the U.S. economy.

In 2012, Trump tweeted that climate change was a hoax perpetrated by China, and this week his aides repeatedly declined to answer directly when asked if he believes in the phenomenon. When asked at a Friday briefing if Trump believes in climate change, his spokesman Sean Spicer said he had not spoken to the president about it.

In seemingly doubting the existence of climate change, Trump is at odds with the military he leads.

“We’re living in it, we are operational,” said Ray Toll, a retired U.S. Navy captain who conducted a pilot project with former President Barack Obama’s White House to examine the regional challenges presented by climate change. “If you’re changing the dynamics, changing the environment, changing the conditions, it’s going to have all kinds of impacts on the way you launch weapons, the way you deploy people.”

Asked about the national security role of climate change in an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation,” U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis demurred, saying the Paris agreement is “not inside my portfolio” and that the Pentagon deals with aspects of a warming climate.

But in written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee after his confirmation hearing in January, Mattis wrote that “climate change can be a driver of instability” and “a challenge that requires a broader, whole-of-government response.” The testimony was published by ProPublica in March.

Instability and conflict

His answers reflected, in part, a broad consensus laid out in a September 2016 memo prepared by the National Intelligence Council, which advises U.S. intelligence agencies, and said that climate change presents risks to stability, human health, and food supplies.

That followed an assessment in the Pentagon’s 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review Report that said climate change “may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict.”

In Syria, a drought about a decade ago was one link in a long chain of events that helped result in the civil war there, said David Titley, a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral who started the Navy’s Task Force on Climate Change in 2009.

That war has contributed to the rise of Islamic State, an ultra-hard-line militant group that has planned and carried out attacks against the West, and which Trump has vowed to destroy.

Infrastructure

In 2016, the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit science advocacy group, assessed that 128 coastal military installations in the United States would be threatened by a three-foot increase in sea levels.

One of the most vulnerable U.S. installations is the U.S. Naval Support Facility at the Diego Garcia atoll in the Indian Ocean, which acts as a logistics hub for U.S. forces in the Middle East and has an average elevation of four feet above sea level.

“We have used that island for every significant military operation in Southwest Asia,” said Titley, who now teaches at Pennsylvania State University.

The U.S. military also faces risks less than a day’s drive from the White House. The main road to the U.S. Naval Station in Norfolk, Virginia, the world’s largest naval base, experiences chronic flooding, and electric and water utilities supporting the base are threatened every time the waters rise.
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US Senators Seek Information on Detained Immigrants’ Medical Care

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U.S. senators who said they had heard multiple reports of inhumane conditions in immigrant detention centers called Friday for the release of more information.

In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, 12 senators — 11 Democrats, plus independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont — said they had received complaints about medical services for detained immigrants — a population of several hundred thousand foreign nationals in an average year.

The lawmakers said they had heard “multiple reports of detainees ending up hospitalized due to delays in treatment, or because they did not receive needed medication, or because of the lack of treatment plans provided for people with serious mental illness after being released from detention facilities.”

They asked Kelly to respond within 30 days, describing how newly arrived detainees receive treatment and how those being discharged are evaluated in a way that ensures continuity of care.

The senators also sought information about how detainees’ health complaints were being handled, how regular medical needs such as dialysis and blood transfusions were being met, and whether child wellness and preventative care were being provided.

Several activist groups supported the lawmakers’ complaint, including Make the Road New York and Human Rights Watch.

8 deaths in ICE custody

Theo Oshiro of Make the Road New York said his organization had heard “deeply troubling accounts from community members” of dangerous and unhealthy conditions in immigrant detention facilities. “Since October of last year,” Oshiro said, “eight people have died in ICE custody, seven of whom were being held in private, for-profit detention centers.”

Grace Meng of Human Rights Watch said, “The lack of transparency around immigrant detention and the medical care provided is appalling. The public has a right to know how Homeland Security is using taxpayer funds to maintain a sprawling detention system that too often fails to provide adequate, appropriate care, leading to needless and preventable deaths.”

In a news release announcing the query, the office of Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, said the United States maintains the largest immigration detention infrastructure in the world, holding between 380,000 and 442,000 people per year.

The letter to the Department of Homeland Security was signed by Senators Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Dianne Feinstein of California, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Menendez, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, Al Franken of Minnesota, Sanders, Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
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Trump Administration Moves to Keep Full CIA ‘Torture’ Report Secret

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U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has begun returning to Congress copies of a voluminous 2014 report describing the CIA’s harsh detention and interrogation programs, U.S. officials said Friday.

The Trump administration’s move means it could be more difficult for the full, 6,700-page report to be made public, because documents held by Congress are exempt from laws requiring government records to eventually be made public.

The White House made the move in response to requests by Senator Richard Burr, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s current Republican chairman, officials said.

In a statement emailed to Reuters, Burr said: “I have directed my staff to retrieve copies of the Congressional study that remain with the Executive Branch agencies and, as the Committee does with all classified and compartmented information, will enact the necessary measures to protect the sensitive sources and methods contained within the report.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Democrat who chaired the committee when the report was produced, had asked that it be distributed to multiple executive branch agencies, a move designed to make it eventually releasable to the public under the Freedom of Information Act law.

Feinstein said in a statement that she was “concerned and disappointed” that Burr requested that the document be returned, calling it a departure from the committee’s normal bipartisan nature.

“No senator, chairman or not, has the authority to erase history. I believe that is the intent of the chairman in this case,” she said.

Senator Mark Warner, who succeeded Feinstein as the committee’s top Democrat, said in a Twitter post he was “disappointed” with Burr’s decision, and that the report “must be preserved so we can learn from past mistakes & ensure that abuses are never repeated.”

A declassified executive summary of the report was made public in December 2014. It concluded that the CIA’s interrogation programs, using techniques such as waterboarding that most observers consider torture, were more brutal and less effective than the CIA had told policymakers.

The report said that not a single terrorist attack was foiled as a result of the use of harsh interrogation techniques.

The American Civil Liberties Union had filed litigation to have the full report released. But U.S. courts ruled that because the document was created by Congress, it was exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

At least one copy of the report, however, will not be returned to the committee. That’s because a copy has been preserved in former President Barack Obama’s presidential archive, according to a Dec. 9, 2016 letter written to Feinstein by Obama’s top White House lawyer at the time, W. Neil Eggleston.

The CIA declined to comment. Burr’s move was first reported by the New York Times.
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Small Iowa Town Celebrates Its Diversity

Posted on by SeeUS

“Hometown to the World” declares the sign at an entrance to tiny Postville, Iowa.

Members of a community of Orthodox Jews — men with long beards, wearing black hats and coats — stroll the streets. Across from the house that serves as their synagogue, a Christian cemetery contains tombstones that bear the names of earlier immigrants — English, German and Scandinavian families who are still listed in the phone directory.

And along the downtown streets are stores run by people from Mexico, Guatemala and Somalia.

“We have no problem with other communities,” Somali store owner Abraham told VOA. “We live side by side, peacefully. It is a calm, quiet town.”

He said the community of about 200 Somalis gathers often for dinners and other social events and for prayer at the house they have designated as their mosque.

By the standards of most big U.S. cities, Postville is not all that diverse. But in this northeastern corner of a very middle American state, most small towns are 98 percent white. Postville boasts that immigrants make up about 25 percent of its fewer than 2,500 residents. Forty-five percent of the town’s elementary school students are from Mexico or Central America.

They and their parents have transformed the community.

Postville’s changes

Thirty years ago, Orthodox Jews from New York City bought a meatpacking plant on the edge of town and turned it into the largest producer of kosher meats in the United States. The plant attracted workers from all over the country and from a number of other countries as well.  

But in May 2008, federal agents swooped in with helicopters and large vehicles and conducted what was at the time the largest immigration enforcement raid ever. It led to the arrest of close to 400 people, mostly at the plant. Many others, including the husbands, wives and children of plant workers, went into hiding, some with the assistance of local church groups.

The plant went bankrupt later that year and was purchased by an investor from Canada in 2009. He renamed it Agri Star and still staffs it largely with immigrants. But they are all screened using the government-approved employee verification system, E-verify.

Postville prospers

Former City Councilman Aaron Goldsmith brought his specialized health care equipment company, Transfer Master Products, to Postville from California 18 years ago, drawn by the low cost of living, the clean air and the opportunity to live with others who share his Orthodox Jewish faith.

“Typically, Orthodox Jews have to live in urban centers to get the infrastructure — school, kosher stores and things like that,” he told VOA. “Postville is a rare exception, where we have the Jewish infrastructure in a small town, and it is very appealing.”

Goldsmith notes that the kosher meat plant continues to provide a strong economic base for the town. The plant now employs about 700 people, a few hundred fewer than the original facility did in 2008. But a plastic products manufacturing plant north of town employs over 150 people. Postville is doing well, Goldsmith said.

“Like all small towns, we do have some shuttered storefronts,” he said, “but by and large, almost everything is rented, and I think we are doing much better than the average small town in America.”

Community harmony

One former meatpacking plant supervisor, who calls himself Mr. Garcia, has established a small restaurant and butcher shop in Postville, where Spanish and English conversations blend together as diners and walk-in customers mingle. He said he spent 28 years working in packing plants all over the Midwest and in Arizona and learned a lot about meat.

“I decided to go it alone and have my own business, using what I have learned about cuts of meat,” he said. “Most of my customers are white people, not Hispanics. They come to buy meat for their barbecues. Some even come from other towns.”

Garcia said he enjoys the quiet, easygoing life in Postville, where everyone gets along well.

Goldsmith gives credit for this to community leaders who early on embraced diversity.

“They went way out of their way to build bridges,” he said. “I think the reason Postville has sustained itself and has endured the ups and downs and challenges to small-town America is because the heart of the town was looking forward, not backward.”
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In Sub-Saharan Africa, 1 in 5 Twins Dies Before Age 5

Posted on by SeeAF

One in five twins born in sub-Saharan Africa dies before turning 5, even as infant mortality has dropped sharply for lone babies in the region, scientists said in a new study.

That means about 315,000 sub-Saharan twins die each year before reaching their fifth birthday, the scientists estimated.

The study, published in The Lancet, a British medical journal, drew on first-of-its-kind research into a little-known phenomenon.

Twin deaths largely unnoticed

“So far, the poor fate of twins has gone largely unnoticed,” Christiaan Monden, co-author of the study and a professor at the University of Oxford, said in a statement.

Sub-Saharan Africa is home to the highest rate of natural twin births and the trend of early deaths is alarming, said the team of British and Dutch researchers.

They said sub-Saharan Africa still has the world’s highest mortality rate for children younger than 5, but the number of deaths among lone infants in that category had halved over two decades.

Yet life chances for under-age-5 twins lagged behind, dropping only a third in comparison, they said.

Their study found a mortality rate of 213 per 1,000 pregnancies, compared to 11 per 1,000 in Finland, for example.

Study is first to look at twins

The study, published Wednesday, is the first to examine trends in mortality of twins in the region, The Lancet said.

The researchers analysed data on some 1.7 million children born in 30 sub-Saharan countries between 1995 and 2014. That sample captured the birth of nearly 60,000 twins.

Giving birth to twins in any part of the world carries a higher risk of death than for single-born children, because of a range of factors from congenital problems to early delivery.

But the authors said the gravity of their findings called for policy action, particularly with the number of children younger than 5 in the region expected to grow 20 percent in the coming decade.

They said upping the chances of twin survival need not involve investment in costly equipment.

Detecting twin pregnancies early might facilitate mothers’ access to specialized health care, they said. To increase their chances of survival, twins also could be monitored by medical staff on a continuous basis in early life.

In 2015, the World Health Organization said in a landmark report that children worldwide were half as likely to die before age 5 than they were in 1990. Those under 5 in sub-Saharan Africa were 12 times more likely to die than those in rich countries.
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Chaotic Final Battles in Mosul Rip Families Apart

Posted on by SeeEA

“Everyone was running from sniper fire like scattered ants,” Mohammad Najim said a few hours after he and about a thousand other people had fled from Islamic State militants Thursday morning. “My wife and daughter fell under other people and I lost them.”

With no identification on him, Najim, a former hotel manager, is unable to move past military checkpoints to search for them in the battle zone. His four other children all made it to safety after leaving their neighborhood, controlled by Islamic State extremists, but he doesn’t even know how to start searching for 5-year-old Sooria and her mother, Imam.

“I heard gunfire and people shouting as they fell,” he said. “They could be injured or dead and I know nothing.”

With very few neighborhoods of Mosul still held by IS, Iraqi forces are inching forward, and escaped families say those who were left behind are awaiting their chance to run. In the chaos of the final throes of IS rule, aid workers say families are increasingly being torn apart as they flee.  

More than 750,000 people have been displaced since the battle for Mosul intensified in October. U.N. officials estimate 100,000 people or more are still expected to flee.

Search is difficult

With more than 12 packed refugee camps in the deserts surrounding Mosul and many displaced families choosing to stay with friends or relatives or in rented housing, finding people is difficult at best.

Reuniting family members is a problem worsened by the scarcity of mobile phones among escapees. In IS-controlled territory, using a mobile phone can be punishable by death.

“It’s like [newly arrived displaced families] have been taken out of the world,” Nameer Usama said Friday. He is a management official at the Hammam Alil camp, the main reception hub for displaced families from Mosul. “People come knowing nothing.”

At least seven other people are still missing among the families that arrived Thursday, he said.

Lost boy

Across a block of tents lined up in the desert dirt, a small boy with one leg, Bunyan, sits in a wheelchair. Doctors told his caretakers he appears to have lost the leg about a month ago. All they really know about him is what he tells them, which is very little.

“A mortar fell on my uncle’s house and the shrapnel cut off my leg,” Bunyan said in a squeaky voice.

They fled their home on Thursday, he continued, and his father put him on a bus that took him to the camp. Save the Children workers found Bunyan alone and placed him with a temporary foster family.  

“When children are lost, they are often unable to give details about their past,” said Ahmed Mahmoud, a Save the Children caseworker at the camp, who fled Mosul this spring as Iraqi soldiers swept into his neighborhood.

“My father didn’t come here then,” Bunyan said, appearing confused.  

Lonely children are despondent

Family members can lose contact with each other after they board separate buses in the trip to Iraqi-controlled territory, another aid worker said.

While they search for his family, Bunyan looks despondent. He loves and misses his parents, and the only thing he wants is a leg.

“When I grow up, my father said he’ll get me a new leg,” he said.

In a massive, sweltering tent reserved for newly arrived families, Abdulkhader, a former oil ministry worker who also fled his home Thursday, said families know the risks when they run. IS militants have ordered civilians either to stay put or move back to Old Mosul, the most tightly held IS stronghold in the area.

Snipers watch for fleeing families, and Islamic State plants bombs on roadsides to deter fleeing civilians from taking cover there from incoming fire. Some families stayed locked in their homes with doors welded shut. In several neighborhoods, the bodies of fleeing civilians killed by IS extremists hang from lamp posts.

Specter of starvation

Not running as the battle moves closer is no longer an option for many. Families fleeing from IS have always cited food shortages and hunger as a reason to give up everything. Now, more and more of them say it is much worse, and they either must flee or face starvation.

“People are already dying from hunger, so they are willing to take any risk,” Abdulkhader said.

Seated on a concrete floor in the tent for the newly displaced, families blamed IS for the food shortages. The militants are still eating well, they said.

“There were IS militants in the house next door to mine,” said Ahmed, a taxi driver. “I told one of them, ‘People are dying of hunger.’ ”

The gunman replied: “If they want food, they can work with us; we will give them everything. Otherwise, it’s their problem.”
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Putin Ridicules Russia Hysteria in US

Posted on by SeeEU

Russian President Vladimir Putin shook off and joked about allegations that Moscow was involved in hacking during last year’s presidential election in the United States or colluded with aides to President Donald Trump before he took office. 

Speaking at the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum Friday, Putin denied there was any deal made between Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak and anyone in Trump’s transition team about easing sanctions against Russia.

“This is some sort of hysteria, you just can’t get over!” joked Putin, half-indignantly.

Putin also repeated that there was no evidence of Russian state involvement in attempts to sway the election in Trump’s favor.

“IP addresses can be invented. You know how many specialists there are, they will arrange it in such a way that your children send something from your home computer [so it appears that] your three-year-old child carried out an attack,” he said.

A day earlier, Putin conceded that hacking could have been done from Russia by “patriotic” people fighting against those who say bad things about Russia. He maintained there was no state support.

U.S. intelligence services say Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee last year to harm the campaign of Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton, who political analysts say Putin despised.

At the forum Friday, Putin lashed out at those blaming Russia for Clinton’s election defeat.

“That reminds me of anti-Semitism,” he said.

“‘It’s all the Jews’ fault.’ If one is foolish and can’t do anything, it’s the Jews’ fault. But we know what such things result in, and they don’t lead to anything good,” Putin added.

Climate deal

On Trump’s announcement Thursday to withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, Putin was one of the very few world leaders to defend Trump’s decision.

“I would hold off on judging President Trump right now because it was President Obama who made the decision [to join the Paris agreement], so maybe the new president believes it was not well-conceived, maybe he thinks there are not enough resources,” he said.

Putin also made it clear that the climate deal was not final as far as Moscow was concerned. 

“As far as I remember, the United States ratified the agreement, but we have not yet,” he said.

The head of the Center for Economic Research at the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements, Basil Koltashov, said Russia is backing away from the deal. 

“The Paris agreement is no longer seen by the Russian leadership as beneficial … Vladimir Putin expressed that. Only he did not say directly, but made it clear that Trump will actually make the project pointless and, therefore, Russia will not be able to participate in it.”

Russian economic recovery

On the economy, analysts said there was a better mood at the forum than previous years.

“There is some optimism, and they spoke not about recession but how to speed up economic growth,” said the Institute of USA and Canadian Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Vladimir Batuk.

Putin said Russia’s economic recovery had entered a new phase, with three consecutive quarters of growth and GDP expected to increase 1 to 1.5 percent this year. He underscored the need for increased investment and a shift to a more modern, digital economy.

But analysts say more efforts are needed by Russia to better attract foreign investment and reduce red tape.

“It is required for Russia, in particular, to analyze and drastically change legislation established for the last 10 years concerning foreign investments by getting rid of multiple restrictions,” said the National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations’ Mikhail Subbotin. “There is so much to be done!” he added.

Earlier in the forum, Putin spoke to U.S. businessmen.

“Help us restore a good political dialogue. I am asking you on behalf of Russia. I am addressing our American counterparts. Help the newly elected president and the new administration of the United States,” Putin said.

Analysts argue there is some evidence that closer business ties could help.

“U.S.-China relations are much more stable than Russia-U.S. relations. The reason for that — China and the U.S. have big trade and investment relations. There’s nothing like that in Russia,” Batuk said. But he also acknowledge Russia too often restricts trade for political purposes. “Yes, indeed in many cases. Not good for both the Russia economy and international relations,” he said.

Olga Pavlova contributed to this report.
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Ireland’s Ruling Party Names First Gay Prime Minister

Posted on by SeeEU

Ireland is set to have its first gay prime minister: Leo Varadkar, the son of an Indian immigrant, who won the ruling Fine Gael party’s leadership election Friday.

Varadkar, 38, also would be the Republic of Ireland’s youngest prime minister ever. He won the leadership contest with 60 percent of the votes and replaces Enda Kenny, who has been Ireland’s Taoiseach, or prime minister, since 2011.

Kenny, 66, announced his retirement last month. Varadkar, as the new Fine Gael leader, automatically becomes prime minister-elect, but the party’s choice must be confirmed by the full parliament when it reconvenes June 13.

The Irish parliament must still confirm his nomination when it reconvenes after a break on June 13. Fine Gael leads a minority government with support from the Fianna Fail party.

In addition to his youth and his openly gay profile, Varadkar also would be the first Irish prime minister from an ethnic-minority background.

“If my election as leader of Fine Gael today has shown anything, it is that prejudice has no hold on this republic,” he said to loud applause after his victory was announced in Dublin.

“I know when my father traveled 5,000 miles to build a new home in Ireland, I doubt that he ever dreamed that one day his son would grow up to be its leader. And despite his differences, [that] his son would be judged by his actions, not his identity,” he said.

Varadkar faces many challenges as prime minister, including steering an economy still recovering from the 2008 global financial crisis. He will also have to navigate Brexit, which is set to impact neighboring Ireland more than most European countries due to its close trading links with Britain.

He said he and his center-right party are “ready for the challenges ahead.” He has pledged to increase infrastructure spending and further slash income taxes.

Varadkar is currently the minister for social protection and has earned a reputation as a candid politician. His party hopes that candor will help in the next elections, while opposition parties hope his blunt style will prove a liability to Fine Gael.
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Mosul Fight Down to Three Neighborhoods, US Military Says

Posted on by SeeEA

The fight for Iraq’s second-largest city is in its final push, with Islamic State down to fewer than 1,000 fighters in three neighborhoods of west Mosul, U.S. military officials said Friday.

Speaking with VOA via Skype from Baghdad, Brigadier General Rick Uribe, the deputy commanding general for U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq, said the “level of desperation” from IS fighters was rising.

“They know they’re about to lose,” Uribe said, “so their goal is to inflict as many casualties, not only in the Iraqi security forces but on any innocent victims and anybody that’s left.”

Uribe told VOA many of the remaining IS militants were the “toughest fighters left” and had used their time in the city to build weapons caches, booby traps and tunnel systems.

According to Uribe, the fighters continue to take hostages in their attempts to bait the coalition into striking civilians. They also are destroying as much infrastructure as possible, he said, to make it more difficult to get the western part of the city up and running once they’ve been defeated there.

Car bombs

Coalition spokesman Colonel Ryan Dillon told reporters Thursday that the “weapon of choice in Mosul” continued to be vehicle-borne bombs.

“With the car bomb threat in mind, the government of Iraq directed civilians not to use cars or motorcycles to avoid being mistaken for militants,” Dillon told Pentagon reporters during a phone call from Baghdad.

After initially asking civilians to shelter in place ahead of the Mosul battle, the Iraqi security forces have now called on all citizens to evacuate Old Mosul in order to reduce unintended casualties.

But fleeing can be a deadly decision for the 80,000 to 150,000 citizens trapped in the three remaining IS-controlled neighborhoods. Dillon said IS fighters were shooting some civilians as they fled, and that other citizens had died after accidentally stepping on explosive devices while trying to leave the area.

Dillon said about 4,000 Mosul citizens had fled each day recently, but that the number had drastically declined in the last 48 hours.

U.S. Central Command, which overseas American military operations in the Middle East, said in a news release Friday that coalition strikes had resulted in 132 additional unintentional civilian deaths, raising the total number of civilians killed by coalition strikes between August 2014 and May 2017 to at least 484.

March airstrike

Last week, a U.S. military investigation into a deadly March airstrike found that a secondary explosion had caused the deaths of more than 100 civilians in Mosul.

The investigation determined that IS fighters had placed large amounts of explosives in a building that housed civilians and then began attacking Iraqi forces from that building.

When the coalition targeted snipers on the roof, the explosives detonated, killing at least 101 civilians sheltering in the bottom floors and four civilians in a neighboring structure.

“There is no military force in the world that has proven more sensitive to civilian casualties,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said shortly after the strike. “We go out of our way to always do everything humanly possible to reduce the loss of life or injury among innocent people. The same cannot be said for our adversaries.”
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Satellite Images Used to Track Food Insecurity in South Sudan

Posted on by SeeAF

The world is watching closely as food shortages grip parts of Africa and the Middle East. As humanitarian groups respond to the crisis, they have to solve a major problem: how to track food security in areas that are simply too remote or too dangerous to access.

The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET) has come up with an innovative answer. The U.S.-funded organization is working with DigitalGlobe, a Colorado satellite company, to crowdsource analysis of satellite imagery of South Sudan.

The effort will rely on thousands of volunteers — normal people with no subject matter expertise — to scour satellite images looking for things like livestock herds, temporary dwellings and permanent dwellings. The group has selected an area of 18,000 square kilometers across five counties in South Sudan to analyze.

“The crowd can identify settlement imagery, they can identify roads, hospitals, airplanes, you name it. It allows us to tap into this network of folks around the world, not necessarily in country, but they are folks who are interested and compelled by whatever the campaign is,” said Rhiannan Price, senior manager of the Seeing a Better World Program at DigitalGlobe.

“Rather than clicking through your phone and passively taking in information, our users are actively engaging and putting information back out there that is really helpful for our partners.”

DigitalGlobe’s platform, known as Tomnod, has more than 2 million unique users. Other crowdsourcing observation campaigns using satellite imagery include the effects of a wildfire in South Africa and counting seals in Antarctica.

But the work is particularly valuable in South Sudan, where an estimated 100,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in the five-county area because of violence. Conflict-ridden South Sudan is the only place in the world where famine has been declared in the past six years.

“For humanitarians to cover that kind of ground, especially when it’s insecure, is just not a safe approach,” said Price. “Satellite imagery offers a really helpful tool when it comes to assessing and evaluating what’s happening on the ground, trying to find those folks so we can get resources and actually quantify the situation there.”

DigitalGlobe owns and operates a constellation of high-resolution satellites and has collected thousands of recent images of the area in question. In order to best track damage and displacement, they are comparing the images with ones from 2015, when they did a similar project.

Chris Hillbruner, deputy chief of party at FEWSNET, said his organization is trying several innovative approaches in different parts of the world to collect data. In Yemen and northeast Nigeria, it has assembled a network of local data collectors that relays information. It has also launched a pilot project using cellphones to collect wage and market data in Madagascar to determine when laborers are in low demand, signaling a bad year for harvests.

“We’re piloting a variety of tools and I think technology can help us, but I would also say that there are limitations,” Hillbruner said. “At the end of the day, we still get the best information when people are able to go into these areas and get on the ground to collect information about what is happening.”

But high-resolution satellite imagery, where each pixel in the photograph represents 30 centimeters on the ground, may be the next best thing to having a person on the ground.

To date, Tomnod’s team of volunteers has identified more than 180,000 objects of interest, including traditional dwellings known as tukuls and herds of livestock. This is invaluable information that tells humanitarian organizations where they need to send help.

“When you think of some of the drivers behind food insecurity, things like conflict or drought or flood, things that affect food supplies, or affect population migration, those are areas where remote sensing, satellite imagery, really excel in a way that other analyses simply can’t compete with,” Price said.
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