Month: July 2017

Saudi Report: Soldier Killed in Attack in Shiite Province

Posted on by SeeEA

Saudi Arabia’s official news agency says attackers have killed a border guard soldier and wounded another in Qatif, an eastern province heavily populated by the kingdom’s minority Shiites.

SPA says the attack took place late on Thursday.

Friday’s report identified the slain soldier as Mohammed Hazai. It gave no further details but said that authorities are investigating.

The attack came days after Saudi Arabia executed four Shiites convicted on terrorism charges for attacks on the police and their role in violent protests.

The Interior Ministry said the four were executed for incidents that took place in Qatif, home to the town of al-Awamiya, where there has been a surge in violence since May between Shiite militants and security forces who are demolishing the town’s historic center.
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US Lawmakers Demand Testimony From Trump Jr, Kushner in Russia Probe

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Key U.S. lawmakers investigating charges of Russian meddling in the 2016 election want Donald Trump, Jr. to testify about his June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in New York with a Russian lawyer thought to have information that could damage Democrat Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

“The revelation that the Trump Campaign eagerly intended to possibly collude with Russia is deeply disturbing,” Democratic House minority leader Nancy Pelosi tweeted Thursday.

Besides his eldest son, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, 36, is expected to testify in closed session. Democrat lawmakers are also demanding that Kushner, a senior adviser to the president, be stripped of his security clearance.

“There doesn’t seem to be any ethical standard in the White House,” Pelosi tweeted. “Jared Kushner’s security clearance must be immediately revoked.”

Trump Jr. asked to testify

Even some members of Trump’s own Republican Party have said it would be in the president’s best interest if he removed all of his children from the White House, including Kushner, who is married to the president’s eldest daughter Ivanka.

In Washington, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to the younger Trump asking him to testify about his June 2016 meeting with Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya. Donald Trump Jr. has said he is willing to testify voluntarily, but Grassley said he would be subpoenaed if need be.

Grassley said no questions would be off limits as the panel investigates what the U.S. intelligence community has concluded was Moscow’s election interference personally directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Democratic Sen. Chris Coons said, “I look forward to asking Donald Trump Jr. what the heck he was thinking in embracing a meeting with someone who said they were representing one of our foremost adversaries in the world?”

Grassley’s committee is one of several congressional panels investigating the Trump campaign’s links with Russia, while Special Counsel Robert Mueller, a former FBI director, is heading a criminal probe into the election interference and whether the president obstructed justice by firing another FBI director, James Comey, while he was heading the Russia probe before Mueller took over.

The leader of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, Speaker Paul Ryan, urged the younger Trump to honor Grassley’s request that he testify.

“I think any witness who’s been asked to testify in Congress should do that,” Ryan said.

Watch: Trump Defends Outreach to Russia and His Son Donald Jr.

Trump: ‘Most people would have taken that meeting’

Speaking to reporters jointly with French President Emmanuel Macron Thursday in Paris, Trump defended his eldest son’s meeting with Veselnitskaya last year.

“I think from a practical standpoint, most people would have taken that meeting,” Trump said Thursday of Donald Trump Jr.’s decision to talk with the lawyer after being told by an intermediary that she was a Russian government attorney and would offer him material as part of Moscow’s election support of Trump.

“It’s called opposition research or even research into your opponent. That’s very standard in politics; politics is not the nicest business in the world but it’s very standard where they have information and you take the information,” Trump said as he stood alongside French President Emmanuel Macron at a Paris news conference.

Trump, who is facing months of investigations in the U.S. about his aides’ contacts with Russians during his run to the White House, said, “Nothing happened from the meeting, zero happened from the meeting, and honestly I think the press made a very big deal over something that really a lot of people will do.

“As far as my son is concerned, my son is a wonderful young man,” Trump said. “He took a meeting with a Russian lawyer, not a government lawyer, but a Russian lawyer. It was a short meeting, it was a meeting that went very, very quickly; very fast.”

Trump was asked whether he agreed with Christopher Wray, his nominee to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation, that his son should have called FBI investigators when offered the meeting because it was supposedly coming from a foreign adversary, Russia. But Trump simply praised his appointment of Wray.
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Shooting at Jerusalem Holy Site Leaves at Least 3 Dead

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Three attackers opened fire near Jerusalem’s holiest site Friday, wounding three Israelis, two of them critically, before they were killed, Israeli police said.

Army Radio said the shooting took place near the sacred site known to Muslims as Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount.

Police said the three attackers were killed by security forces. The Israeli ambulance service Magen David Adom said two of the Israelis wounded were receiving life-saving treatment.

After the shooting, Israeli police declared Friday’s Muslim prayers will not be held at the sacred site.

The ancient, marble-and-stone compound houses the al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third-holiest site, and the seventh century Dome of the Rock. Thousands pray there every Friday.

Police were still checking whether the gunmen, who were reportedly killed by security forces, were Palestinian, a spokesman said.

 
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Turkish Tech Startups Head to Silicon Valley

Posted on by SeeEU

For tech entrepreneurs in Turkey, the unstable situation after last year’s coup attempt has made it harder to get the word out about the country’s tech scene and to solicit outside investment. Some entrepreneurs recently traveled to the United States for Etohum San Francisco, an event bridging the Turkish startup community with Silicon Valley. VOA’s Michelle Quinn reports.
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Turkey Marks First Anniversary of Failed Coup

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Turkey marks the first anniversary of a failed military coup (July 15) against the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In a subsequent purge, about 100,000 government employees were dismissed and 40,000 were arrested. Last April, the country’s authoritarian leader further consolidated his power through a constitutional referendum. The United States has condemned the coup, but has disagreed with Ankara on several issues. Zlatica Hoke reports.
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Anti-Islamic State Coalition Intensifies Pressure on Extremists, Looks to Future

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U.S. officials and dozens of their global partners wrapped up three days of meetings this week on how to intensify global pressure against Islamic State militants. Members of the 72-nation anti-IS coalition gathered in Washington this week, just days after as Iraq declared victory over the extremists in Mosul after months of battle. Experts are looking toward rebuilding and stabilizing areas the militants once controlled. VOA State Department correspondent Nike Ching has more.
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In Africa, DRC, Others Have Good Election Examples to Follow

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As countries like Kenya, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo prepare to hold elections, analysts in Washington are trying to identify key challenges to democratic elections in Africa and ways of improving the electoral process. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports.
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Trump, Macron Work to Bridge Differences, But No Promises on Climate

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President Trump is making no promises to change his decision on pulling the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord, something that made for awkward moments on the first day of his trip to France. But, as VOA Europe Correspondent Luis Ramirez reports from Paris, Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron focused on finding common ground on areas like Syria and counterterrorism.
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Judge: Grandparents, Other Relatives Exempt from Travel Ban

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A U.S. judge Thursday granted the state of Hawaii’s bid to exempt grandparents and other relatives from President Donald Trump’s temporary travel ban on residents from six Muslim-majority countries and refugees.

U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson in Honolulu had been asked to narrowly interpret a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that revived parts of Trump’s March 6 executive order banning people from those countries for 90 days. Watson on Thursday declined to put on hold his ruling exempting grandparents from the ban.

A Justice Department representative could not immediately be reached for comment.

Supreme Court ruling

The U.S. Supreme Court last month let the ban on travel from the six countries go forward with a limited scope, saying it could not apply to anyone with a credible “bona fide relationship” with a U.S. person or entity.

The Trump administration then decided that spouses, parents, children, fiances and siblings would be exempt from the ban, while grandparents and other family members traveling from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen would be barred.

The Trump administration also said that all refugees without a close family tie would be blocked from the country for four months.

Trump said the measure was necessary to prevent attacks.

Opponents sue

However, opponents including states and refugee advocacy groups, sued to stop it, disputing its security rationale and saying it discriminated against Muslims.

Hawaii’s attorney general Douglas Chin asked Watson to issue an injunction allowing grandparents and other family members to travel to the United States. Hawaii and refugee groups argue that resettlement agencies have a “bona fide” relationship with the refugees they help, sometimes over the course of years.

The Justice Department said its rules were properly grounded in immigration law.

In his ruling, Watson said the government had an “unduly restrictive reading” of what constituted a close family relationship.

The rollout of the narrowed version of the ban was more subdued than in January, when Trump first signed a more expansive version of the order. That sparked protests and chaos at airports around the country and the world.
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UN Gives Goats as Emergency Food Measure in Boko Haram-hit Nigeria

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Nearly 1,000 women struggling to put food on their tables in Boko Haram-hit northeast Nigeria have received goats as emergency assistance, the United Nations said Thursday.

The region is threatened with famine after the militants’ eight-year insurgency to create an Islamic state, which has killed more than 20,000 people and forced 2.7 million people to flee their homes.

Many women, traditionally responsible for small livestock, have had their animals stolen or were forced to leave them behind to escape, leaving them with virtually no source of food and money for their families, aid agencies say.

“Many are alone because … men have left, been injured, disabled or even killed,” Patrick David, Nigeria country representative for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

FAO said it delivered 3,600 goats to about 900 women in the northeastern Borno state. Each received three breeding females and one male.

The “emergency distribution” targeted families hit hardest by the conflict, such as those displaced or who recently returned home in areas taken back by the Nigerian army, the agency said in a statement.

“My husband is paralyzed for the last five years due to injuries sustained during the conflict. As an only earning member, I will keep these goats to reproduce so we can sell some of them and buy grains,” Bintu Usman, 35, was quoted as saying by the FAO.

Families living in towns or villages where displaced people have sought shelter also received help, said David.

“Animal restocking is crucial for the benefit of women for whom goats play a major role for the household nutrition security through the provision of milk and a source of revenue,” he said.

More than 5 million people do not have enough to eat in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states, including 50,000 living in famine-like conditions.

Nigeria’s army and troops from neighboring countries have pushed Boko Haram out of most of a swath of land about the size of Belgium that it controlled in early 2015. But insurgents continue to carry out suicide bombings and raids in northeast Nigeria, as well as in Cameroon and Niger.

A suicide attack in Borno’s capital of Maiduguri killed 17 people and injured 21 on Wednesday.
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UN Considers New Base in ‘Nightmare’ South Sudan Region

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The United Nations on Thursday said it is considering putting a peacekeeping base in South Sudan’s troubled Yei region, saying the city has “gone through a nightmare” in recent months. It would be the first such expansion since civil war began in 2013.

“I can see the prosperity that was once here,” the peacekeeping mission’s chief, David Shearer, told residents on his first visit. But stories of rape, killings and abductions are common in what has become one of South Sudan’s most volatile cities.

Growing ethnic violence

The U.N. warned of growing ethnic violence there after bodies with bound hands were found late last year. In May, a U.N. report said pro-government forces killed 114 civilians in Yei between July and January, brutally raping girls and women in front of their families.

Three months ago, 37-year-old Suzanne Minala was abducted by rebels on the edge of Yei and held for 30 days. Raped and beaten nightly, the mother of two said she returned home to find four of her relatives had been killed in her garden. She suspects it was government soldiers.

“The government doesn’t want to hear about crimes because they kill people,” Minala told The Associated Press, rubbing a scar on her wrist where she had been bound.

Since the fighting reached Yei a year ago, 70 percent of the population has fled. Remaining residents say it’s like living in a prison. The city is under government control but surrounded by opposition forces, and both have restricted access to food and aid.

“We can’t go out,” one community leader, Ali Ecsss, told the AP. Residents said some who go beyond a few miles outside the city never return.

​Breadbasket of South Sudan

“It is a cruel tragedy of this war that South Sudan’s breadbasket, a region that a year ago could feed millions, has turned into treacherous killing fields,” said Joanne Mariner, Amnesty International’s senior crisis response adviser.

The U.N. said a peacekeeping base will come to Yei only if local movements are unrestricted. At a meeting last week with humanitarian workers, Yei’s governor said he would open the roads. Aid workers and the U.N. have repeatedly noted that despite such promises by government officials, restrictions remain in many parts of the country.

“Humanitarians will have to work with the country’s national security service in order to ensure their safety,” said Goodwin Ale, a field officer with the interior ministry.

The U.N. has several peacekeeping bases in South Sudan, where tens of thousands have been killed in the civil war. More than 200,000 civilians still shelter in the bases after the U.N. took the unusual decision to open their doors shortly after the conflict began.

Nearly 2 million other people have fled the country, creating the world’s fastest-growing refugee crisis.
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Iraq Pushes Back Over Allegations of Civilian Casualties, Abuse in Mosul

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Iraqi officials are downplaying allegations by human rights groups about high numbers of civilian casualties and abuses following the battle to retake Mosul from the Islamic State terror group.

Military officials visiting the Pentagon Thursday placed the blame for civilian deaths during the fighting in Mosul on the tactics employed by IS fighters as Iraqi forces closed in on their positions.

They also suggested videos purporting to show Iraqi forces beating or abusing suspected IS fighters who had been taken prisoner may be fakes.

“There are those who would like to make the victories made by the military of Iraq not as significant,” Brig. Gen Saad Maan, a spokesman for Baghdad Operations Command and Iraq’s Interior Ministry, said through an interpreter.

“There are a lot of fabrications and rumors and false news regarding what happened,” Maan added.

Confirmed location

Human Rights Watch said Thursday it had used satellite imagery to confirm that a video posted to Facebook the day before had been taken in west Mosul.

The video shows men in Iraqi military uniforms beating a detainee and shooting at him.

Maan told Pentagon reporters that Iraqi officials had looked at the images and that some military personnel had been suspended, pending the outcome of an investigation.

The Iraqi officials also responded to a Human Rights Watch report that at least 170 families allegedly connected to IS had been forcibly relocated to a “rehabilitation camp” outside of Mosul.

“Iraqi authorities shouldn’t punish entire families because of their relatives’ actions,” HRW Middle East Director Lama Fakih said in a statement. “These abusive acts are war crimes and are sabotaging efforts to promote reconciliation in areas retaken from ISIS.”

Iraqi Joint Operations Command spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool said through a translator: “There is no situation or scenario where the Iraqi forces will forcefully get people out of their homes.”

Rasool said officials were still seeking “precise information,” but added there were instances in which Iraqi forces aided civilians trying to safely leave the city.

Human rights groups also have been raising concerns about the number of civilians killed during the operation to retake west Mosul from Islamic State.

IS tactics

But Rasool put the blame for those deaths on IS tactics.

“This terrorist organization was trying to cause the most civilian casualties knowing very well they had lost the battle of Mosul,” he said.

“They booby-trapped everything. The small areas. The alleyways,” Rasool noted. “They were using hundreds of booby-trapped vehicles and they used it among civilians.”

Human rights group Amnesty International released a report Tuesday saying at least 400 civilians died just in west Mosul between January and mid-May.

Growing concerns about potential human rights violations and the high civilian death toll come as Iraqi forces remain engaged in efforts to clear parts of Mosul, where pockets of IS fighters are either hiding or trying to hold out.

At the same time, Iraqi officials are starting to shift some of their focus toward the next steps in the campaign to eradicate IS from its remaining strongholds.

IS fighters remain

U.S. officials estimate that aside from perhaps a few hundred IS militants left in Mosul, there could be as many as another 2,000 fighters holding out in other parts of Iraq, although their grip on what is left of their self-declared caliphate is slipping.

“With the coalition’s help the ISF will keep the pressure on this enemy while they are on their heels,” Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman Col. Ryan Dillon said.

He described Islamic State’s military decline as “increasingly rapid.”

Iraqi military officials said their next target could be Tal Afar, about 60 kilometers to the west of Mosul, or the town of Hawija, to the southeast, in Iraq’s Kirkuk province.

They also said that despite the toll IS was able to inflict on Iraqi forces during the nearly nine-month battle for Mosul, the military still could launch simultaneous operations in multiple locations against the terror group.
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Old Cinemas Become Cultural Centers in Lebanon

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With peeling paint and crumbling plasterwork, an abandoned picture house and its renovation in the northern Lebanese town of Tripoli is more than a dream for Qassem Istanbouli.

The 31-year-old has reopened three such cinemas, two in his home city of Tyre in southern Lebanon, and another in Nabatiyeh, and has transformed them into hubs for film, art and theater.

“When I embarked on this journey, I felt I shared this dream with people in my city who are eager to have a cultural life restored,” said Istanbouli, who shows films by directors such as Woody Allen, Pedro Almodovar, David Lynch and Lars Von Trier.

Istanbouli, who was born in Tyre and studied fine arts and directing at the Lebanese University, initially relied on a bank loan and donations from the public for his projects but now gets financial support from the Lebanese ministry of culture, a Dutch NGO and the United Nations force in Lebanon.

Istanbouli’s dream is also driven by a family connection, his father used to repair cinema projectors, while his grandfather screened movies from Greece and the Palestinian territories, projecting them on a wall.

“This is a way to achieve my father’s dream,” he said.
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Gaza’s Electricity Shortage at Crisis Level

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The electricity supply to Gaza’s 2 million residents has dropped to unprecedented lows, with blackouts lasting for more than 24 hours, the territory’s power distribution company said Thursday, prompting fears of a humanitarian and environmental crisis.

The Palestinian enclave needs at least 400 megawatts of power a day, but only 70 megawatts were available as of late Wednesday, when Gaza’s power plant shut down after fuel shipments from Egypt were interrupted following a militant attack last week.

The Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights said the power cuts have caused a rapid deterioration in basic services, “especially health and environmental services, including water and sewage draining.”

The coastal strip had been experiencing the worst electricity shortage in years, limiting Gazans to about four hours of electricity per day.

​Abbas asks Israel to cut shipments

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas recently asked Israel, the main provider of power to Gaza, to cut shipments as a way of pressuring the Islamic militant group Hamas, which seized power in Gaza a decade ago.

Several neighborhoods were without electricity for more than 24 hours Thursday.

Late Thursday, Hamas said 27 Egyptian trucks with 1.5 million liters of diesel entered Gaza for the power plant. It was unclear when operations would resume.

Diesel fuel from neighboring Egypt had kept the station running at half capacity since June 21, but deliveries were interrupted after a deadly attack on Egyptian soldiers last week near the border. Gaza’s power station has low storage capacity, and requires new fuel shipments on an almost daily basis.

Abbas pressures Hamas

Abbas has tried to squeeze Hamas financially in recent months, hoping to force it to cede power. He slashed salaries of his employees there, stopped payments for ex-prisoners and reinstated heavy taxes on the power plant’s fuel.

Palestinians have been split since 2007, with Hamas ruling Gaza and Abbas governing parts of the West Bank. Repeated reconciliation attempts have failed.

The Egyptian diesel shipments were facilitated by Mohammed Dahlan, a former leading figure in Abbas’ Fatah movement who fell out with the Palestinian president in 2010, went into exile and has since forged strong ties with the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.
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Gambia Searches Jammeh’s Palaces for Missing Millions

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In a warehouse on the sprawling country estate of Gambia’s exiled former leader, Yahya Jammeh, silver platters pile up beside dusty crates of empty champagne bottles with labels commemorating his 1994 coup.

A bailiff picks through the boxes and scribbles down notes — the start of what the new government says is a search for tens of millions of dollars of looted assets, an investigation that Jammeh’s supporters have dismissed as a witch hunt.

A U.S. official in Banjul said Washington was planning to help, and government staff say they are counting on World Bank assistance. The size of the Kanilai estate — just a small fraction of Jammeh’s holdings, according to the government official leading the tour — shows the scale of the task ahead.

“We suspect most of the things were taken away before he left — the treasure, possibly weapons and most of the vehicles,” said the bailiff from Gambia’s high court, Modou Moussa Ceesay, taking an inventory of Jammeh’s possessions.

The former president, accused by opponents and rights groups of widespread violations and corruption, fled Gambia in January as regional forces descended on the capital, Banjul, to enforce the results of an election he lost.

He has not commented on the investigation from his new base in Equatorial Guinea. His still strong band of supporters left behind in the tiny West African state have called the plunder hunt a case of victor’s justice.

Tanks, zebras, camels

Kanilai was Jammeh’s birthplace and is now his most elaborate estate — complete with farm, mosque, tanks, multiple residences, jungle warfare training camp and vast private safari park housing exotic parrots, zebras, hyenas and camels.

Building materials lie next to an unfinished new palace, near a billboard of a smiling Jammeh embracing his family.

The justice ministry team inspected it all under the gaze of a group of Jammeh’s relatives and supporters, all wearing the green T-shirts of his APRC party. One of them stuck up his middle finger at the visiting delegation.

APRC leader Fabakary Tombong Jatta later told Reuters he had no knowledge of any embezzlement of state funds or foreign assets owned by Jammeh.

“These people just want anything with any link to Jammeh, and that’s not fair,” he said, calling the investigation “witch-hunting.”

New President Adama Barrow took office in January and set up a task force to track down Jammeh’s assets in May. “Most of the paper trails are available,” Gambian Solicitor General Cherno Marenah said.

But following those paper trails is proving time-consuming. Investigators made their first visit to the heavily fortified estate just this month.

Finance Minister Amadou Sanneh last month said $100 million — more than a third of the annual budget — had been siphoned from state firms in the riverside nation, nearly half of whose 1.8 million people live in poverty.

A list of Jammeh assets temporarily seized by the government pending a court order showed 14 businesses in such fields as media, insurance and farming.

Sanneh said the government planned to sell four of Jammeh’s presidential planes.

‘Too much for one man’

Marenah said investigators were also looking into assets in Morocco and the United States, where one U.S. official told Reuters that Jammeh owned property in Potomac, Maryland, a wealthy suburb of Washington, D.C.

An official in the U.S. Embassy in Banjul confirmed that they were collaborating with the Gambian government on how to assist with the recovery efforts.

The World Bank is to help Gambia through its Stolen Assets Recovery Program, Marenah said, though the bank declined to comment.

Back at Kanilai, once a small village near the border with Senegal, soldiers lead a tour of Jammeh’s main residences. The screeches of three of his abandoned parrots echo inside an empty ballroom hanging with crystal chandeliers.

One of the pictures hanging on the wall shows a young Jammeh holding a staff some Gambians thought gave him mystical powers — he long said he had developed a secret cure for AIDS.

A pile of paperwork, including an old business document from a visiting Royal Dutch Shell delegation, sits near a bookshelf holding Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s memoir The Downing Street Years.

At the entrance to another residence, soldiers swap jokes and take turns playing on a grand piano and shooting pool next to a fake Christmas tree.

“It’s too much for one man,” mutters one of them as the delegation tours the rooms.
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Egypt’s Coptic Christians to Halt Activities After Security Threat, Sources Say

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Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Christians have been told by church leaders to cancel all events and activities outside churches in July because of a security threat, church sources said Thursday.

The warning followed an attack in May by Islamic State on Copts traveling to a monastery in central Egypt that killed 29 people. A month earlier, 44 people were killed in bomb attacks at a cathedral and another church on Palm Sunday.

Sources said the warning was given to individual church leaders by a representative of the Coptic Orthodox Pope. Copts on trips or youth camps had been told to cut short their activities and return home early.

The Egyptian Catholic church said it got the same instructions. The church “complied with the interior minister’s decision to cancel church trips and camps until further notice,” Father Rafik Greish, a spokesman for the Coptic Catholic Church, told Reuters late Thursday.

A Coptic church official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media, told Reuters that his church received “oral instructions this week, nothing written, to prevent panic,” he said.

The source said the church was provided with more security forces to secure the gates of the church this week.

Egypt faces an Islamist insurgency led by the Islamic State group in the Sinai Peninsula, where hundreds of soldiers and police have been killed since 2013.

At least 23 soldiers were killed last week when suicide car bombs tore through two military checkpoints in the region in an attack claimed by Islamic State. It was one of the bloodiest assaults on security forces in years.

But Islamic State has also intensified attacks in the mainland in recent months, often targeting Coptic Christians.

About 100 Copts have been killed since December.
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Ethiopians Race to Leave Saudi Arabia as Mass Deportations Loom

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Thousands of Ethiopians in Saudi Arabia are in a state of limbo as they try to return home after being ordered to leave the Gulf state.

On March 29, Saudi Arabia launched a campaign it dubbed “Nation Without Violations,” giving all foreign immigrants living there illegally 90 days to leave without incurring a penalty. They were told they could return later after applying and going through the immigration process.

As of the beginning of July, 111,000 Ethiopians had agreed to leave Saudi Arabia and 45,000 had successfully returned to Ethiopia, according to Meles Alem, the spokesperson of the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Many remained stranded, however, due to an inability to get a seat on overbooked flights.

Saudi government officials believe there are about 400,000 Ethiopians living illegally in the country. Most are employed as maids or other domestic workers; they have few legal rights and endure widespread abuse.

In early July, VOA Amharic reported that 110 people were stuck for days in a community center in Riyadh, waiting for open seats on flights back to Addis Ababa.

“It is difficult for me to sit or sleep. There is another pregnant woman here and what is going to happen to us?” the woman told Gabina, VOA’s Amharic youth program. 

Another woman said, “We don’t have proper sanitation here. About 20 people are jammed in one room.”

Most of those who were stranded last week have returned to Addis, but many more are trying to get out as soon as possible.

It is unclear how many foreign workers will be affected. Middle East Monitor reported there are about 5 million illegal foreign workers living in the country. Saudi Arabia’s total population is 32 million, and it relies heavily on imported labor.

Government officials have said the move will improve job prospects for Saudis. It will “revive the economies of companies and establishments and protect small businesses and projects from illegal expats, while also reducing unemployment rates and creating a safe economic and social environment,” said Turki Al-Manea, general director of the branch of the ministry of labor and social development in Qassim, according to Arab News.

The head of the Ethiopian community in Riyadh, Shawel Getahun, warned that people should not try to start the process of traveling now.

“People who actually bought tickets should consider going on time. Those who haven’t bought tickets should process their papers in due time before it’s too late,” he said.

History of abuses

This is not the first such deportation. In 2013 and 2014, a similar effort led to the deportation of tens of thousands of Ethiopians. Many were detained, beaten and held in squalid conditions prior to deportation, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.

Yasin Kakande, a Ugandan journalist who has reported from the Middle East for more than a decade, said a traditional system known as “Kafala sponsorship” exists throughout the Gulf states, leading many African migrants to live in a state of indentured servitude.

The system gives Gulf citizens the right to sponsor foreign workers, who often must serve as maids or servants for an indefinite amount of time and for little or no pay.

“Most of the workers whom they refer to as illegal actually come to the countries legally,” Kakande told VOA. “They have high hopes of working and helping their families at home, but once they get into these countries … they find that there are a lot of abuses, that they cannot get away.”

In recent years, stories of maids being raped, beaten and starved have generated worldwide outrage. In one case that went viral on YouTube, a maid in Kuwait was left dangling from a seventh story window while her employer filmed it, making no attempt to help before the woman lost her grip and fell.

“Most of them, what they try to do, is try to run away from their sponsors to try to find some justice, and in the end they end up becoming illegals because the law doesn’t give them a chance to get out of their employer,” Kakande said.
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Trump Envoy Announces Israeli-Palestinian Water Deal, Silent on Peace Prospects

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U.S. President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy announced an Israeli-Palestinian water agreement on Thursday but dodged questions on whether he was making headway on reviving peace talks.

At his first news conference in Jerusalem since launching a series of visits in March, Jason Greenblatt declined to say if he was any closer to a return to negotiations between the two sides that collapsed in 2014.

“Let me interrupt you to save time. We are only taking questions about the Red-Dead (water) project,” said Greenblatt, who was a legal adviser to Trump’s businesses before being appointed Special Representative for International Negotiations.

He was referring to a World Bank-sponsored plan to build a nearly 200-km (120-mile) pipeline from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea and a desalination plant in the Jordanian port of Aqaba that was agreed in principle in 2013.

Under that deal, which aims to increase fresh water supplies for Jordan, the Palestinians and Israel and revitalize the Dead Sea’s falling water levels, Israel agreed to increase water sales to the Palestinian Authority by 20 million to 30 million cubic meters a year.

Israeli Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi, estimated it would take another four to five years to complete the $900 million endeavor.

The desalination plant will produce at least 80 million cubic meters of water annually. Under an agreement signed with Jordan in 2015, Israel will buy up to 40 million cubic meters of that at cost each year.

Greenblatt said Israel, whose own desalination plants have led to a water surplus, would sell up to 33 million cubic meters to the Palestinian Authority as part of the finalized agreement signed on Thursday.

Palestinian Water Authority head Mazen Ghoneim put the figure at 32 million and said 22 million would go to the Israeli-occupied West Bank and 10 million to the Gaza Strip.

“We hope that this deal will contribute to the healing of the Dead Sea and that it will help not only Palestinians and Israelis but Jordanians as well,” Greenblatt said.

“I am proud of the role that the United States and our international partners have played in helping the parties reach this deal and I hope it is a harbinger of things to come.”

The idea of a canal from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea was first talked about by the British in the 1850s, as an alternative to the Suez Canal.

Many plans have since been proposed, mainly aiming to preserve the Dead Sea, whose minerals are used in ointments and cosmetics.

 
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Russian Jets Buzz NATO Airspace as ‘Close Encounters’ Rise Sharply

Posted on by SeeEU

Russia has significantly increased its military activity in the skies around Western European NATO members, according to a new report that warns the tactic could present a danger to civilian aircraft.

NATO forces in Europe scrambled fighter jets to intercept approaching Russian aircraft — so-called Quick Reaction Alerts or QRA — close to 800 times last year. That’s almost double the figure from 2014, according to London-based analyst group The Henry Jackson Society.

Its report calls for improved communication and clearer rules of engagement between Western European powers and Moscow to avert potentially dangerous incidents.

The tactic was routine in the Cold War, but has been revived by Moscow since relations have deteriorated between Russia and the West following Russia’s forceful annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014.

Report author Andrew Foxall says the Russian tactics are partly propaganda.

“Russia is able to portray itself theoretically as being strong, and NATO members and NATO as a whole being weak. And this works very well domestically with President Putin,” he said.

But Foxall adds that the flights also allow Russia to harvest intelligence.

“On channels of information between NATO member states; it’s able to gain information on the abilities of the Royal Navy captains and Royal Air Force pilots. It’s able to gain information on our early warning system for example,” he said.

Russian naval activity also has increased in the Baltic Sea and north Atlantic, especially around the Scottish home of Britain’s nuclear-armed submarine fleet. Foxall says the British Royal Navy fears its submarines could be tracked.

“If Russian submarines were able to, in a sense, record the unique acoustic signature of those submarines then that would have a very, very detrimental effect on the UK’s ability to defend itself,” said Foxall.

In turn, Russia accuses NATO of buzzing its airspace. A video released by the Kremlin last month appears to show a NATO Typhoon jet shadowing a plane carrying Moscow’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

 

 

 

 

 

 
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Trump’s FBI Pick Pledges Independence from White House

Posted on by SeeUS

President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI pledged to resist any political pressure from the White House and voiced support for the special counsel’s ongoing Russia investigation. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, Christopher Wray, who would take over from fired FBI director James Comey, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday.
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Top US Diplomat Heads Back to Qatar, but Impasse Grinds on

Posted on by SeeUS

The top U.S. diplomat returned to the besieged nation of Qatar on Thursday for a final round of talks on a shuttle-diplomacy tour aimed at breaking a deadlock between the tiny OPEC member and four Arab neighbors.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was expected to deliver a readout to 37-year-old Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani of his meetings with the king of Saudi Arabia and other officials from three other Arab countries lined up against Qatar.

The trip has yet to result in any sort of breakthrough to an increasingly entrenched dispute that has divided some of America’s most important Mideast allies.

Tillerson has been shuttling between Qatar, Saudi Arabia and mediator Kuwait since Monday trying to break the impasse, though officials have been careful to downplay expectations and caution any resolution could be months away.

His clearest achievement has been to secure a memorandum of understanding with Qatar to strengthen its counterterrorism efforts and address shortfalls in policing terrorism funding.

That deal goes to the core of the anti-Qatar quartet’s complaints against the natural gas-rich state: that it provides support for extremist groups.

Qatar vehemently denies the allegation, though it has provided aid that helps Islamist groups that others have branded as terrorists, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

The anti-Qatar bloc argues the pressure and demands it has placed on Qatar helped lead to the counterterrorism pact, but it has said it does not go far enough to end the dispute.

It is holding fast to its insistence that Qatar must bow to a 13-point list of demands that included shutting down Qatar’s flagship Al-Jazeera network and other news outlets, cutting ties with Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, limiting Qatar’s ties with Iran and expelling Turkish troops stationed in the tiny Gulf country.

Qatar has rejected the demands, saying that agreeing to them wholesale would undermine its sovereignty.

The squabble among five of its Mideast allies has put the United States in an uncomfortable position and risks complicating the Pentagon’s operations in the region.

Qatar hosts al-Udeid Air Base, the largest U.S. military installation in the Middle East and hub for U.S.-led operations against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. Bahrain is home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, while American surveillance planes and other aircraft fly from the UAE.
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Britain Unveiling Bill to Convert EU Laws

Posted on by SeeEU

Britain is publishing legislation Thursday that will allow existing European Union laws to be converted into British law when it exits the bloc in 2019.

The step is the first in a long process involving decades of laws and could bring contentious debate with Prime Minister Theresa May’s government, weakened by a snap election last month.

Voters in Britain set off the exit from the European Union one year ago in a referendum narrowly won by those advocating leaving the bloc.

Beyond the internal process of updating the law, Britain and the European Union are in negotiations on the terms of the withdrawal, which is due to be completed at the end of March 2019.
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Senate Republicans Making New Health Care Push

Posted on by SeeUS

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell plans to unveil a revised health care bill to Republican colleagues Thursday, as he makes a push to achieve one of the top legislative goals for the party and President Donald Trump.

McConnell last month withdrew an earlier plan after it became clear there was not enough support for it in the Republican-led Senate.

Trump has been vocal this week in pushing Senate Republicans to finish work on a health care bill before leaving for their annual August vacation.

His latest comments came Wednesday in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, with Trump saying he would be “very angry” if a health care bill does not pass.

McConnell has postponed the scheduled recess by two weeks in order to give lawmakers more time.

An assessment of the previous Senate bill by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said the number of uninsured Americans would rise by 22 million during the next decade when compared to the current system.

Without details of the new plan, it is unclear how different it will be, but McConnell faces a similar challenge in keeping the support of his fellow Republicans. The party has a 52-48 majority in the Senate, and with no Democrats voicing support for the effort to revamp the health care system they passed under President Barack Obama, only a few Republicans can oppose the measure and still have it succeed.

The main Republican criticisms of the existing Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, are that it is too costly and unfairly requires people to purchase health insurance or else face a penalty.

Sen. Ted Cruz has proposed allowing health insurance companies that are currently required to cover certain services in their plans to be allowed to offer much more basic options that would be less costly for healthier people who need less care. But opponents of that initiative say that will only serve to allow coverage for people with more medical problems to become unaffordable.

Some senators want to eliminate as much as possible of Obama’s signature law, while others are looking to preserve popular parts of it, including insurance funding for poorer Americans.

The House of Representatives narrowly approved repeal of the legislation in May. Trump initially cheered the passage of that bill at a White House rally, but since has called it “mean” and lobbied the Senate to approve an overhaul with “heart.”
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Pushing America First, Trump Seeks Common Ground in France

Posted on by SeeUS

U.S. President Donald Trump arrived in France Thursday for Bastille Day celebrations that will see American and French troops marching together Friday on Paris’ famed Champs Élysées.

The two-day trip could be somewhat of a respite from media scrutiny on alleged links between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia, but he was expected to face further questions during a news conference in Paris late Thursday relating to a meeting last year between his son, Donald Trump, Jr., and a Russian lawyer. The younger Trump released emails showing he believed the meeting was to discuss possible damaging material against the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

Watch: Trump Heads for Difficult Encounter in France

Ahead of the pageantry, the U.S. president will try to find common ground on issues of Syria and counterterrorism, in otherwise strained relations with France’s young new president, Emmanuel Macron.

Macron made headlines at the NATO summit last May, when cameras focused on his handshake with Trump, in which the slender, 39-year-old French leader firmly gripped Trump’s hand for several seconds in what some media characterized as an arm wrestle.

Awkward visit

President Trump’s aim is to show that his administration remains engaged with traditional European allies. Like Trump, Macron is newly elected and assumes leadership as a political outsider. Analysts say this next meeting promises to be a civil encounter, although it will be difficult to hide the profound differences between the two.

“At the same time, this will be a particularly awkward encounter; because the French not only have elected a president who is almost the antithesis of Mr. Trump, but there is this deep animosity to the fact that the Trump administration is withdrawing from the Paris climate accord,” said Timothy Stafford, a U.S. foreign policy researcher at the Henry Jackson Society.

Many French, including Macron, are dismayed by the U.S. decision, largely because France put much work into hosting the 2015 climate change summit and considers the agreement a great achievement.

“So to finally have reached a conclusion on that agreement only to see the newly elected United States president withdraw the U.S. from it almost with next to no notification, that will be a very sore point of contention at those meetings and no matter how much they try to paper over it in their public appearances, you can be sure that in the private discussions that they have, the French will be doing everything they can to try to find some sort of solution to this,” Stafford said.

​Putin ties; nervous West

Trump’s relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, on display in their marathon meeting at the G-20 last Friday, is another thorn in the relationship.

France, along with the rest of Western Europe, is nervous.

“There’s nothing that’s happened there in substantive terms in which we should worry a lot,” said Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director of the Royal United Services Institute in London. “But the process, the language, the way in which he seems very ready to use quite harsh language against allies and more reluctant to use harsh (language) against Russia makes people think, well a few months down the line, are we going to see an American initiative on Syria, or Russia, or on Ukraine, or somewhere else agreed with the Kremlin before it’s been discussed with people in Paris, or Berlin or indeed London.”

This is Trump’s third overseas visit since taking office in January. All three trips have included Europe.

For Trump, the visit to the French capital and his participation in a high-profile event attended by other global leaders is a way to show America remains engaged with the world under his administration while promoting Americans’ interests. For Macron, it is a chance to assert himself as a strong leader who is able to deal with and influence major powers. On Thursday, a headline in the Paris newspaper Le Figaro read “Macron wants Trump to Emerge from Isolation.”

On Friday, the U.S. president and first lady Melania Trump will take part in Bastille Day celebrations and commemorations of the 100th anniversary of the U.S. entry into World War I.

Shortly after Air Force One touched down at Paris’ Orly airport Thursday, the U.S leader went into meetings with U.S. embassy personnel and U.S. military officials.

Later Thursday, Trump was to tour Les Invalides, a 17th century complex housing a military museum and the tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte, before heading to the Élysée Palace for meetings with Macron.
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