Month: July 2017

Russia Orders US to Reduce Diplomatic Staff

Posted on by SeeUS

Russia’s foreign ministry said Friday it is imposing counter measures on the U.S. in response to new sanctions voted by Congress Thursday. The ministry said the sanctions confirm the “extreme aggression of U.S. in international affairs.”

“We propose to the U.S. side,” the ministry said, “to bring the number of diplomatic and technical staff working in the U.S. embassy in Moscow and the consulates general . . . in exact accordance with the number of Russian diplomats and technical staff in the U.S.” Russia said the reduction in force would bring the number of U.S. diplomats and staff to 455.

U.S. lawmakers approved a bill Thursday imposing new sanctions on not only Russia, but also Iran and North Korea.

Senators overwhelmingly approved the bill with a vote of 98-2, a day after the House and Senate agreed on the terms.

Republican Sen. Bob Corker announced the deal in a statement late Wednesday, saying it came after discussions with House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

The House had already passed the bill with a vote of 419-3.

Corker had earlier objected to including the North Korean sanctions, initially favoring to address that issue in a separate bill. But he dropped those objections and said the House of Representatives would work on enhancing the North Korea language. Lawmakers pushed for more Russia sanctions in response to Russia’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Russian President Vladimir Putin denies the charges and objects to the passage of new sanctions against his country.

The bill is designed to affect a wide range of Russian industries, hitting the country squarely in the pocketbook.

Presidential objections

Trump objects to the sanctions, but the bill has enough support in both houses to override a presidential veto. He particularly objects to a passage barring presidential interference aimed at easing the sanctions. The White House has been lobbying for weeks for a bill with a lighter impact.

The European Union has also expressed concern about the new sanctions, saying they could have an impact on the European energy sector.

During weeks of negotiations, the Trump administration pushed back at what it saw as an attempt to limit the executive branch’s ability to unilaterally ease sanctions, making the case that it limits U.S. leverage in attempts to impact Russian behavior and build a better relationship with Putin. The White House has now expressed support.

“The president very much supports sanctions on those countries and wants to make sure that those remain. But at the same time, (he) wants to make sure that we get good deals. Those two things are both very important for the president,” White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters on Monday.

According to state-run Russian media, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned Wednesday the new sanctions will scuttle any chance of improved relations between Moscow and Washington. He also stated that Russia had previously warned the Trump administration it would mount a response if U.S. lawmakers passed the bill.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers are already praising the group effort to pass the bill quickly. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce said in a statement: “I am pleased the Senate has acted overwhelmingly to give the administration much-needed economic and political leverage to address threats from Iran, Russia, and North Korea. This bipartisan bill is about keeping America safe, and I urge the president to sign it into law.”

Senator Mark Warner, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a member of the Senate Banking Committee said, “This bill passed with overwhelming majorities in both the Senate and the House, sending a strong message to Vladimir Putin that attacks on our democracy will not be tolerated. President Trump should sign this bill as soon as it hits his desk. Otherwise, he risks encouraging Russia’s interference in future elections.”

Capitol Hill correspondents Michael Bowman and Katherine Gypson contributed to this report.
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Israel on Alert for Friday Prayers at Jerusalem Shrine

Posted on by SeeEA

Israeli police were on high alert Friday ahead of Muslim prayers at a major Jerusalem shrine at the center of recent tensions. 

 

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said men younger than 50 would be barred from the site Friday following security assessments indicating Palestinians plan protests there. There are no restrictions on women.

 

Rosenfeld said some Palestinians barricaded themselves inside Al-Aqsa Mosque overnight in order to join protests later. Police removed them after they refused to leave, he said. 

 

Friday prayers are the highlight of the Muslim religious week. Thousands of Muslims from around Israel and Palestinian areas typically worship at the holy compound in Jerusalem’s Old City. 

 

Tensions have been running high at the site Arab gunmen killed two police officers on July 14, prompting Israel to install metal detectors and other security devices. 

 

The move outraged Muslims who claimed Israel was trying to expand its control over the site. Israel emphatically denied the allegations insisting the security measures were needed to prevent more attacks. 

 

The issue sparked some of the worst street clashes in years and threatened to draw Israel into conflict with other Arab and Muslim nations. 

 

Under intense pressure, Israel removed the metal detectors and said it planned to install sophisticated security cameras instead.

 

Muslims had been praying in the streets outside the shrine to protest the security measures since they were installed. They turned to pray at the sacred site Thursday after Israel removed them. 

 

However, violence resumed as Palestinians gathering for prayers at the compound clashed with police.
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Trump to Address MS-13 Gang Violence in Crime-Plagued New York Community

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Using the site of last week’s mass arrests of notorious MS-13 gang members as a backdrop, President Donald Trump’s visit to the city of Brentwood, New York, underscores the severity of transnational violence that has plagued a heavily Hispanic community. As federal authorities ramp up efforts to eradicate the gang, residents are wary and divided over its intended or unintended consequences.
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Calls Grow for New Authorization for War on Terror

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President Donald Trump inherited U.S. military operations to combat terrorism around the globe. Now a bipartisan group in Congress is pushing for debate on whether the legal justification for those operations needs to be updated. Lawmakers argue the war on terror has significantly changed since the current authorization for use of military force, or AUMF, was passed in 2001. VOA’s Katherine Gypson has more from Capitol Hill.
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AIDS Burdens Zimbabwe’s Elderly With Orphans, Illness

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Jabulani Zilawe lost all 11 of his children to AIDS. Now he is the only one left to care for their orphans.

“This has become my life — with my grandchildren. All their parents died. AIDS killed them. I had 11 children, six of them were girls who had moved to South Africa to seek better life, but they all came back dead — one after the other,” Zilawe told the Thompson Reuters Foundation as he surveyed his small grandchildren scrambling around him.

Zilawe lives in a dilapidated homestead outside Norton, a town 40 kilometers from Harare, the Zimbabwean capital.

His bedroom is a thatched mud hut that sits near 12 mounds marking the remains of his wife and children.

“My sons, who became illegal gold miners, also suffered from AIDS before they died. You can see the graves here; the additional one belongs to my wife, who also died some two years ago, leaving me to look after our orphaned grandchildren,” said Zilawe, 76.

Nearby, some of his grandchildren wrestled over a pot of leftover porridge. None is in school; instead, like their grandfather, each child passes the day at the homestead, idling and seeking a spot to bask in the sunshine.

Some of the little ones fall ill — regularly, said Zilawe, who didn’t know whether any carried the virus that had killed their parents.

“I don’t know anything about my grandchildren’s HIV status; maybe they have the disease or maybe not,” he said.

Ailing caregivers

His life is tough. Yet many other Zimbabweans in Zilawe’s age bracket are not just caregivers but are also coping with AIDS diagnoses of their own.

“It’s sad. It’s worrying when you look at the rate of HIV/AIDS amongst aged persons here. The percentage of elderly persons aged 60 years and above living with HIV is around 15.3 percent,” said Marck Chikanza, national coordinator of the National Age Network of Zimbabwe (NANZ), an organization that caters to older people’s needs.

NANZ said more than 115,000 older people are living with HIV and AIDS in Zimbabwe, one in 10 of the 1.2 million Zimbaweans who the United Nations says are living with HIV/AIDS.

“There has been a decline in the rate of people living with HIV across all age groups except in the 50+ age group, where there has been a rise from 13.8 percent to around 14.3 percent,” said Tadiwa Pfupa-Nyatanga of the NAC organization, which coordinates the government’s response to HIV/AIDS.

According to 2016 official statistics, about 185,000 AIDS-orphaned Zimbabwean children are living under the guardianship of their grandparents — people like Zilawe, who struggle to cope.

“Most aged persons here hardly have the capacity to produce or buy food on their own. And most of the orphaned kids they look after are far too young to be working to produce food for their families. And the burden, at the end of the day, rests with the grandparents — who, in a true sense, are also dependents,” Anatalia Mabeza, who chairs an HIV/AIDS support group in Norton, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation..

Some orphaned children say their grandparents offer little or no medical help for the health problems they inherited.

“I was openly told by my mother before she died that I was born with the HIV/AIDS condition, but now as I live with my grandmother, who is in her 60s, she has never bothered to monitor my condition,” said Lillian Muranda, 14, who lives in Caledonia informal settlement, 25 kilometers east of Harare.

‘I was bewitched’

“She tells me I was bewitched, but I’m always ill and absent from school most of the time,” Muranda told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

As Muranda delved deeper into the bewitching story, her grandmother, Agnes Muranda, stepped in sharply to intervene: “Why do you bother her? You newsmen are very bad. You want to rule out witchcraft from my granddaughter’s illness. Leave us.”

Superstitious beliefs like this hinder government efforts to combat AIDS, and even if a grandparent has good information and plenty of intent, it doesn’t mean that help will follow.

“We have no means to support our AIDS-orphaned grandchildren besides the treatment drugs they receive from government health care centers. What we can only do is to make sure they take their medication. Remember, we are also victims of a failing economy and there are also many amongst aged persons who are living with HIV,” said Jonathan Mandaza, who chairs the Zimbabwe Older Persons’ Organization.

As Zilawe sees it, he is shunned as an aging irrelevance yet is left to pick up the pieces of his children’s lost lives.

“As older persons, we are not consulted on HIV and AIDS issues, yet there is also a strong misconception that sex matters don’t concern us. As such, access points for condoms and other HIV/AIDS services only favor younger people, leaving us out,” said Zilawe.
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Google Hopes to Train 10M Africans in Online Skills, CEO Says

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Alphabet’s Google aims to train 10 million people in Africa in online skills over the next five years in an effort to make them more employable, its chief executive said Thursday.

The U.S. technology giant also hopes to train 100,000 software developers in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa, a company spokeswoman said.

Google’s pledge marked an expansion of an initiative it launched in April 2016 to train young Africans in digital skills. It announced in March that it had reached its initial target of training 1 million people.

The company is “committing to prepare another 10 million people for jobs of the future in the next five years,” Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai told a company conference in Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos.

Google said it would offer a combination of in-person and online training. Google has said on its blog that it carries out the training in languages including Swahili, Hausa and Zulu and tries to ensure that at least 40 percent of people trained are women. It did not say how much the program cost.

Africa, with its rapid population growth, falling data costs and heavy adoption of mobile phones, having largely leapfrogged personal computer use, is tempting for tech companies.

Executives such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s Chairman Jack Ma have also recently toured parts of the continent.

Basic phones, less surfing

But countries like Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa, which Google said it would initially target for its mobile developer training, may not offer as much opportunity as the likes of China and India for tech firms.

Yawning wealth gaps mean that much of the population in places like Nigeria has little disposable income, while mobile adoption tends to favor more basic phone models. Combined with bad telecommunications infrastructure, that can mean slower and less internet surfing, which tech firms rely on to make money.

Google also announced plans to provide more than $3 million in equity-free funding, mentorship and working space access to more than 60 African startups over three years.

In addition, YouTube will roll out a new app, YouTube Go, aimed at improving video streaming over slow networks, said Johanna Wright, vice president of YouTube.

YouTube Go is being tested in Nigeria as of June, and the trial version of the app will be offered globally later this year, she said.
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US Cuts Ties With Local Syrian Group Trained to Fight IS

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The U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State is cutting ties with a local Syrian partner force who “engaged in activities not focused on fighting ISIS,” a coalition spokesman said Thursday.

Army Colonel Ryan Dillon told reporters that American forces were “in the process of ceasing our support and receiving the equipment” provided to the group Shohada al-Qartyan (ShQ) to fight Islamic State militants in southern Syria.

“We have made it very clear time and again that our goal in Syria and in Iraq is to fight ISIS and to fight ISIS only,” Dillon said, using the common acronym for Islamic State. “Our partner forces, we’ve asked them to be committed to that same mission.”

Two U.S. officials confirmed to VOA that the group targeted pro-Syrian regime forces located outside southern Syria’s so-called deconfliction zone, which for months has been established as the area within a 55-kilometer radius of the al-Tanf garrison, where coalition forces are training counter-IS fighters.

One official confirmed that this was not the first time Shohada al-Qartyan had carried out these types of attacks.

“They wanted to go back on their oath to fight only Islamic State,” another official told VOA.

Still talking

Other local allies remain at the garrison and continue to cooperate with coalition advisers, officials said, with Dillon adding that discussions with ShQ leaders were ongoing.

The Pentagon refers to its local allies in southern Syria as the “Vetted Syrian Opposition” (VSO), and many of these Arab fighters initially organized against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The VSO differs from the Syrian Democratic Forces, a large fighting force of both Kurdish and Arab fighters who are fighting Islamic State in northern Syria.

Some of the VSO forces are indigenous to areas along the middle Euphrates River Valley, a region overrun by IS. Dillon estimated Thursday that 5,000 to 10,000 IS fighters had gathered in that area.

However, Syrian government troops have recently positioned themselves between the al-Tanf garrison and the middle Euphrates River Valley.

“Can we leave on trucks and go straight across to Abu Kamal and Mayadin and Deir ez-Zor without running into the regime? Likely not,” Dillon said. “But as far as any future plans on getting them into the fight, we will address that, and we believe that there will be an opportunity to use them in the fight against ISIS in the middle Euphrates River Valley when needed.”

The story was first reported by CNN.
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Islamic State Threatens Iran in New Video

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The Islamic State group has issued a short new video in which it threatens the Islamic Republic of Iran and vows to destabilize the country with terrorist attacks.

The video, released Tuesday, depicts a teenage boy in military uniform who directly looks at the camera and speaks Persian with a bold voice, threatening the regime.

The teenager is introduced as the “Persian Qattadah” in the video, which is the name of a close disciple of Prophet Muhammad.    

“We will destroy your land and your home, we will disrupt your security and we will shed your blood into rivers,” the teenager is heard saying in the video.

Iran has not yet reacted to the video. It was produced in similar fashion to other videos released by the terror group in the past.   

In late March, IS released a 36-minute, Persian-language video aimed at Iran’s Sunni Muslim minority in which several adults spoke in Persian, but with heavy Baloch and Arabic accents.

The new video portrays a child soldier who speaks fluent Persian with no accent at all, which suggests that the terror group may have made inroads in parts of the country to recruit.

Mixed reaction

Analysts’ views on the content and purpose of the video were mixed.

Some said IS wanted to exploit Iranian Sunnis, who have long been deprived of their rights.

“Islamic State’s propaganda is falling on fertile ground as Sunnis in Iran are deeply underprivileged and deprived of many of their rights,” Ali Alfoneh, a nonresident senior fellow at Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East at The Atlantic Council, told VOA.

“It is hardly surprising that the Islamic State is trying to target Iran’s Sunni minority,” Alfoneh added.

Others downplayed the video and viewed it as a desperate move by IS to show that it remains relevant. The terror group has faced numerous defeats on the battlefield in recent months in Iraq and Syria.

“This is an isolated case and depicts a desperate effort by IS to show it is still capable of conducting new attacks,” said Alex Vatanka, a senior analyst at the Washington-based Middle East Institute.

“With less territory under control and shrinking sources of revenue, recruiting new members from Iran, where people, even dissident Sunnis, see less common ground with IS, seems to be shooting in the dark and bears no fruit at all,” Vatanka added.

Marginalization of Sunnis

Alfoneh of the Atlantic Council said he thought that some of Iran’s policies were purposefully marginalizing the country’s Sunni minority from the mainstream, which could drive them closer to extremist groups like IS.

“Iran’s Sunnis are being oppressed, and the Iranian government policy of relating Sunnis to IS and Saudis has not given the desired fruit expected,” he said. “Twin attacks on June 7 committed by Iranian members of IS prove that fact.”

IS militants carried out twin terrorist attacks in early June targeting Iran’s parliament and the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic.

The attacks, which IS claimed responsibility for, killed at least 17 people and injured dozens more.

Iran’s mainly Baloch and Kurd Sunni minorities have long accused Tehran of discriminating against them because of their religious views.

Human rights organizations also have talked of mass executions of Sunnis and have urged Iran to lift restrictions on Sunnis, who make up about 9 percent of the country’s population.

Tehran has acknowledged it executed at least 977 people in 2015, which it says was mainly for drug-related crimes.
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Nigeria Lawmakers’ Plan to Clip Presidency Powers Passes Second Stage

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Nigeria’s lower house of parliament voted on Thursday in favor of constitutional amendments to reduce the presidency’s powers, the latest step in a power struggle between President Muhammadu Buhari and the national legislature.

The Senate, parliament’s upper house, led the way on Wednesday in backing constitutional changes that could weaken the presidency and boost the legislature, prompting a senior official in Buhari’s government to speak of “a very unhealthy” power grab.

Senate head Bukola Saraki, who has been tipped as a possible successor to the ailing Buhari and who is pushing the changes, said on Wednesday they would help boost Nigeria’s political, economic and social development.

Though the House of Representatives broadly accepted the major proposed amendments, it rejected some that had been passed by the Senate.

The two chambers will now form committees to meet and agree on a final version of the proposals before sending them to state assemblies.

The amendments must still be approved by two-thirds of those 36 regional state parliaments and then be signed off by the president.

The measures include providing certain legal immunity to members of the legislature and reducing the president’s ability to withhold assent for a bill passed by parliament.

The parliament also voted to impose time limits on key presidential decisions such as nominating ministers and proposing federal budgets, both of which have been much-delayed under Buhari.

Buhari, 74, is currently in Britain where he has spent much of the year receiving treatment for an undisclosed medical problem.
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Turkish Parliament Changes Bylaws

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The Turkish parliament has approved a series of changes to its bylaws, which critics say aim to further curtail opposition voices.

The amendments cover a range of issues from what the parliament speaker can wear to how long a bill can be debated.

The government insists the changes will render parliament more effective. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is accused of increasing authoritarianism, has long criticized the opposition for allegedly obstructing the work of parliament.

The changes come as Turkey is engaged in an unprecedented crackdown on the alleged perpetrators of last year’s failed military coup, which human rights group say has been broadened to include all government opponents.

More than 50,000 people have been arrested and over 110,000 have been fired from their government jobs.

Two lawmakers stripped of power

Also Thursday, the parliament voted to strip two pro-Kurdish lawmakers of their status of Member of Parliament on the grounds of “absenteeism.”

The vote brings the number of Peoples’ Democratic Party’s (HDP) lawmakers who have lost their seats to four.

In the last general election in November 2015, the HDP won 59 seats, becoming the second largest opposition party.

Certain words banned

With the changes to the parliament’s bylaws, legislators will now be punished for using certain words, including “Kurdistan” or “Kurdish province” — terms  frequently used by HDP legislators.

Nationalists who backed the amendments regard the terms as an expression of separatist sentiment.
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Congo Says Conflict-ravaged Kasai Ready to Register Voters

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The head of Congo’s election commission said on Thursday that better security in the conflict-ravaged Kasai region had enabled preparations for a delayed election to replace President Joseph Kabila, but it still may not happen before a year-end deadline.

Kasai poses Congo’s biggest security challenge and is the scene of a growing humanitarian disaster in a country where militia violence since Kabila refused to step down in December has raised fears of a slip back into civil war.

But the central region appears to be settling down a little, with fewer reports of unrest, especially in the main towns.

“We’ve seen that security has returned,” election commission head Corneille Nangaa said in an interview in the capital of Kasai-Central province, Kananga, a town of dirt roads and iron-roofed buildings surrounded by thick bush and palm trees.

“The question of enrolling voters is nearly behind us,” he said while on the tour of the region, where, however, a Reuters reporter saw many enrollment centers that had been burned to ashes because of the conflict.

Earlier this month, Nangaa said that the vote would probably not be possible this year due to delays registering voters, particularly in Kasai.

The insurrection there by the Kamuina Nsapu militia, which demands the withdrawal of Congolese forces from the area, has driven 1.4 million people from their homes and killed more than 3,000 since August last year.

Despite the security improvements, Nangaa said he could not guarantee the vote would take place this year, as required by a deal with Congo’s opposition that allowed Kabila to stay in power beyond the expiry of his mandate last December.

With so many missed deadlines and an apparent lack of political will for the election to go ahead anytime soon, many Congolese doubt it will happen this year.

A Reuters journalist was able to accompany Nangaa on the nearly 200-km (125-mile) road trip from Mbuji-Mayi, in neighboring Kasai-Oriental province, to Kananga, a journey that may have been too dangerous some months ago.

Nangaa said that the commission had registered 37 million of an expected 42 million to 45 million voters nationwide since last July, but did not provide a date for when enrollment would begin in the parts of Kasai hit hardest by the violence, nor when the commission would announce the election date.
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Key Political Players Back Sessions in Face of Trump Ire

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Powerful political figures in Washington are coming to the defense of embattled U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, rebuking President Donald Trump for his days of complaints about the country’s top law enforcement official.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told NBC News on Thursday there will be “holy hell” to pay if Trump fires Sessions, who was a Senate colleague of Graham’s until Trump tapped him as attorney general.

Trump has vented his anger at Sessions, an early supporter of his presidential campaign, for removing himself from oversight of the Justice Department’s investigation of Russia’s interference in last year’s presidential election.

‘Beginning of the end’

That in turn led Sessions’ deputy to name a special prosecutor, former Federal Bureau of Investigation chief Robert Mueller, to conduct a criminal investigation of possible Trump campaign collusion with Moscow aimed at helping Trump win. The probe has consumed the early months of Trump’s White House tenure, even as Trump has branded the investigation a “witch hunt” and an excuse by Democrats to explain his upset victory over Democrat and former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Graham said that “any effort (by Trump) to go after Mueller could be the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency unless Mueller did something wrong. Right now I have no reason to believe Mueller is compromised.”

Graham and two Democrats said they are drafting legislation to insulate Mueller from being fired without judicial review.

Gingrich offers advice

One Trump supporter, former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich, told National Public Radio, “I think he should keep Jeff Sessions. And I think he ought to quit publicly maligning him.”

Democratic Senator Charles Schumer, the Senate minority leader, noted Sessions’ political support of Trump when he was an underdog in last year’s race for the Republican presidential nomination, the first senator to endorse Trump’s candidacy.

“I would say to my fellow Americans, Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, every American should be troubled by the character of a person who humiliates and turns his back on a close friend after only six months,” Schumer told the Senate on Wednesday.

“All Americans should be wondering: Why is the president publicly, publicly demeaning and humiliating such a close friend and supporter, a member of his own Cabinet?” Schumer said. “They should wonder if the president is trying to pry open the office of attorney general to appoint someone during the August recess who will fire special counsel Mueller and shut down the Russia investigation. Let me say, if such a situation arises, Democrats would use every tool in our toolbox to stymie such a recess appointment.”

Twitter attacks

Trump for days has lobbed attacks at Sessions, a highly unusual public spat in Washington between a president and a member of his Cabinet. Trump publicly said he is “disappointed” with Sessions, while calling him “VERY weak” and “beleaguered” in Twitter comments.

Associates of Sessions have told the White House he has no intention of quitting his post at the U.S. Justice Department, and so far Trump has not fired him.

Sessions has continued to oversee the Justice Department, heading to El Salvador on Thursday for discussions with officials there about how to stamp out the violent street gang MS-13.

Sessions was at the White House on Wednesday for meetings, but did not talk with Trump. He reportedly has not been in direct contact with the president for days.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said even though Trump is “disappointed” in Sessions, the president wants him to continue to run the Justice Department and focus on controlling illegal immigration and investigating leaks of classified government material to journalists.

The Washington Post said that Trump has mused with aides about replacing Sessions when Congress takes its annual recess in August, in order to avoid a protracted Senate confirmation hearing over a new attorney general. The White House called the report “more fake news.”
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California Officials to Announce Human Trafficking Arrests

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California law enforcement officials say they’ve made arrests in what they believe to be one of the largest human trafficking cases in the western U.S.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra are expected to provide details of the probe at a news conference Thursday morning.

Authorities did not provide detailed information about the case.

But they say it involves sex, fraud and theft crimes that spanned across California, Nevada and Texas. 

Investigators say the probe was launched in December 2016 after a missing person report was filed in Tulare County in Central California.
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White House Divisions on Display with Scaramucci’s Comments

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The rifts inside President Donald Trump’s White House were on startling display on, as his new communications director urged Trump’s chief of staff to state publicly that he does not leak information to the media.

Anthony Scaramucci, a New York financier who last week became the White House communications chief, also compared his relationship with Trump’s chief of staff, Reince Priebus, to a pair of brothers from the Bible, one of whom killed the other.

Scaramucci said last week he and Priebus were friends and “a little bit like brothers, where we rough each other up once in a while, which is totally normal for brothers.”

On Thursday, Scaramucci said in an interview with CNN: “When I said we were brothers from the podium, that’s because we’re rough on each other. Some brothers are like Cain and Abel. Other brothers can fight with each other and get along. I don’t know if this is repairable or not. That will be up to the president.”

Scaramucci appeared to suggest in a Twitter post late on Wednesday that Priebus may have had a hand in what Scaramucci described as a “leak” of his official financial disclosure documents to the U.S. news organization Politico.

Politico said the information was not a leak but was publicly accessible.

“When I put out a tweet and I put Reince’s name in a tweet, they’re all making the assumption that it’s him because journalists know who the leakers are,” Scaramucci told CNN on Thursday.

“So if Reince wants to explain he’s not a leaker, let him do that,” Scaramucci added.

Scaramucci had written earlier on Twitter: “In light of the leak of my financial disclosure info which is a felony. I will be contacting @FBI and the @TheJusticeDept #swamp @Reince45.”

Scaramucci’s comments illustrated an ongoing power struggle at the highest levels of Trump’s staff as the Republican president faces investigations into his election campaign’s connections with Russia and with Trump yet to win congressional approval for any major legislation.

Republican U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan defended Priebus after Scaramucci’s comments.

“Reince is doing a fantastic job at the White House and I believe he has the president’s confidence. If those two gentlemen have differences my advice would be to sit down and settle your differences,” Ryan said at a news conference.
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US Senators Prepare Bill to Block Firing of Special Counsel

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Warning of “holy hell” to pay if the president fires Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a top Senate Republican is working to prevent the potential end result, the dismissal of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

 

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is working on legislation that would block the firing of special counsels without judicial review. Democrats Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said Thursday they are among the senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee who are working with Graham on the effort.

 

Despite a drumbeat of criticism from President Donald Trump, congressional Republicans have expressed strong support for former FBI Director Mueller, who was appointed earlier this year to investigate allegations of Russian meddling in the U.S. election and possible links to the Trump campaign. They have also rallied around Sessions, a former senator from Alabama who has become a daily target of critical tweets from Trump.

 

Graham and Whitehouse lead the Judiciary panel’s subcommittee on crime and terrorism and have been investigating the Russian meddling along with the committee’s chairman, Iowa GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley. A Graham spokesman says the senator’s still working on the bill, and it’s unclear when it will be introduced.

Blumenthal said that the bill “might be a committee effort” and said that it would protect Mueller and other special counsels. He said firing Mueller “would precipitate a firestorm that would be unprecedented in proportions.”

 

Graham has sternly warned Trump not to fire Mueller or Sessions. He said Thursday, “If Jeff Sessions is fired, there will be holy hell to pay.”

 

Trump has criticized Sessions for recusing himself from the investigation into election meddling after he admitted to meeting with Russia’s ambassador during the campaign. Sessions, who traveled to El Salvador Thursday to work on an effort to lessen gang violence, has privately told allies he doesn’t plan to resign.
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Official: Joint US-Afghan Operation Kills 2 Top Insurgents

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A joint U.S. and Afghan military operation in Afghanistan’s eastern Paktika province killed two al-Qaida-linked leaders and led to the capture of a third, a government official said Thursday.

Paktika provincial governor’s spokesman Mohammad Rahman Ayaz said the battle in a remote mountainous region on the border with Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal region raged throughout the night and into the day Thursday.

The two men who were killed were identified by Ayaz and militants with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan as Asad Mehsud and Gul Wali Mehsud. Jamal Mehsud was arrested. Mehsud is a tribe that lives in Pakistan’s South Waziristan tribal areas.

Ayaz said the operation, which took place in Paktika’s Barmal district on the border with Pakistan, began shortly before midnight and continued until the early afternoon.

Meanwhile in Kabul, several hundred young Afghans demonstrated on Thursday, demanding the country’s president and chief executive resign because of the deteriorating security situation, particularly in the Afghan capital.

Calling their group the Uprising for Change, they briefly blocked traffic and shouted slogans demanding government officials resign.

Recent bombings have included one on Monday in which a suicide car bomb killed 24 people and wounded 42 others. On May 31, the deadliest suicide attack since the collapse of the Taliban in 2001 took place in Kabul, killing 150 people and wounding scores.

Abdul Hakim Hamraz, one of the coordinators of the rally, said that if after 20 days their demands are not met, they will set up a protest tent in the middle of the city, similar to the one erected following the May 31 bombing.

After three days the government removed the tent, but not before several protesters were killed. 
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UN: As Many as 50,000 Civilians Still Trapped in Syria’s Raqqa

Posted on by SeeEA

The United Nations estimated Thursday that 20,000 to 50,000 civilians remained trapped in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the site of heavy fighting as U.S.-backed local forces seek to defeat Islamic State militants in their self-declared capital.

U.N. deputy humanitarian chief Ursula Mueller told the Security Council, “Their situation is perilous. There is no way for them to get out.”

Mueller said the heavy fighting and airstrikes had killed or injured dozens of civilians and had displaced more than 30,000 people in July.

The Syrian Democratic Forces, a group of Kurdish, Arab and Christian fighters, began their offensive to liberate the city June 6. They have received air and ground support from the U.S.-led coalition.

“Civilian movement out of the city remains extremely difficult due to the presence of mines and other unexploded ordnance, as well as shelling, sniper activities and airstrikes,” Mueller said during a video briefing from Amman, Jordan.

“The U.N. and its partners are responding to those who have been displaced and we are ready to provide support in Raqqa city, as soon as access and security conditions allow,” she said.

In its monthly report on the humanitarian situation in Syria, the U.N. said the situation inside the city was “reportedly dire.” Civilians continue to be killed by air and ground strikes, food and medicine shortages persist, and markets and bakeries remain closed.
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British Judge Decides Charlie Gard Will Be Sent to Hospice

Posted on by SeeEU

The British High Court ordered terminally ill infant, Charlie Gard, to be moved to a hospice facility to die, ending a case that has spurred debate over the role of the state in children’s rights and health care.

The decision was made Thursday after Charlie’s parents and Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, where he is being treated, failed to agree on an end-of-life care plan for the 11-month-old. If no further agreement is reached, Charlie will be moved to Hospice on Friday in accordance with the hospital’s plan. The life-support systems would be removed shortly after, “inevitably result[ing] in Charlie’s death within a short period of time,” according to the judge.

“It is not in Charlie’s best interests for artificial ventilation to continue to be provided to him, and it is therefore lawful and in his best interests for it to be withdrawn,” the court order said.

Charlie was born with a rare genetic disease called encephalomyopathic mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome – one of only 16 confirmed cases worldwide. He cannot see or hear, he cannot move or breathe, he cannot cry or swallow, he suffers from frequent epileptic seizures. He would turn one year old on August 4.

Earlier this year, the hospital treating Charlie asked for court permission to remove him from life support, saying that keeping him alive was merely causing more suffering. The parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, disagreed and asked for permission to take Charlie to the United States for experimental treatment. The British courts and the European Court of Human Rights all backed the hospital.

The Court of Human Rights argued that “undergoing experimental treatment with no prospects of success would offer no benefit, and continue to cause [Charlie] significant harm.”

The case drew pitched coverage from British tabloids and captured worldwide attention after world leaders like President Donald Trump and Pope Francis weighed in, offering medical support.

Earlier this week, Gard and Yates abandoned their months-long legal fight, acknowledging the illness was untreatable.

They then asked to take their son home to die, a request the hospital denied. According to the hospital, the “invasive ventilation” that Charlie required was only available in the hospital. The machines would not fit into the family’s home in London.

Under British law, children hold rights independent of their parents, meaning the parents do not always have the absolute right to make medical decisions for their children. Great Ormond Street Hospital released a statement expressing regret over the public disagreement.

“We deeply regret that profound and heartfelt differences between Charlie’s doctors and his parents have had to be played out in court over such a protracted period,” the statement read. “While we always respect parents’ views, we will never do anything that could cause our patients unnecessary and prolonged suffering. The priority of our medical staff has always been Charlie.”
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White House Hints Trump Could Veto Russia Sanctions

Posted on by SeeEU

The White House Thursday broached the possibility that President Donald Trump could veto new sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea, prompting sharp criticism from U.S. lawmakers of both political parties.

“He may sign the sanctions exactly the way they are, or he may veto the sanctions and negotiate an even tougher deal against the Russians,” White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci told CNN.

Even the hint of a veto brought swift reaction from Capitol Hill.

“I think that would be a very bad mistake,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, told VOA. “What would be better is if they [White House officials] worked with us on the legislation.”

“This [sanctions bill] gives the president a stronger hand in dealing with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” said the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Ben Cardin of Maryland. “If he vetoes it, it means he doesn’t want a stronger hand in dealing with Mr. Putin.”

“It’s hard to understand what comes out of the White House,” Cardin added.

“Congress has the power to override [a veto], and he would be overridden,” said New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menendez.

‘Laughable’

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer derided as “laughable” Scaramucci’s assertion that Trump could negotiate even tougher sanctions against Russia.

“I’m a New Yorker too,” Schumer said, adding, “And I know bull when I hear it.”

The House of Representatives approved the sanctions bill Tuesday by a vote of 419-3. A similarly lopsided vote is expected in the Senate.

The bill seeks to impose an economic cost on Moscow, Tehran, and Pyongyang for an array of activities to which Washington objects, and gives Congress the power to block any presidential move to suspend the punitive measures.

During weeks of negotiations, the Trump administration initially pushed back at what it saw as an attempt to limit the executive branch’s ability to unilaterally ease sanctions, making the case that it limits U.S. leverage in attempts to impact Russian behavior and build a better relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

That concern seemed to have been resolved at the start of the week, when the White House voiced backing for the legislation

“The president very much supports sanctions on those countries and wants to make sure that those remain, but at the same time wants to make sure that we get good deals. Those two things are both very important for the president,” White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Monday.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Wednesday that Moscow would likely retaliate against the United States if the sanctions are imposed.

According to state-run Russian media, Ryabkov warned that the new sanctions will scuttle any chance of improved relations between Moscow and Washington. He also said that Russia had previously warned the Trump administration it would mount a response if U.S. lawmakers passed the bill.

VOA’s Katherine Gypson contributed to this report.
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Senegal Votes Sunday After Heated Legislative Campaign

Posted on by SeeAF

Senegal is wrapping up a heated campaign season ahead of Sunday’s legislative polls.  

Tear gas filled the air in Dakar’s city center this week as police dispersed an opposition demonstration called by former president Abdoulaye Wade to denounce the organization of the upcoming election.

Wade’s return to the country to lead the main opposition coalition has been just one spark raising the temperature during this campaign period.

Another key political figure, the mayor of Dakar, is leading his “Manko Taxanu Senegal” coalition from prison. Khalifa Sall was arrested in March and charged with embezzling public funds. He demanded temporary release during the campaign period, but his request was rejected by the Supreme Court.    

Supporters waited for the verdict outside the court. Mama Gueye, a coordinator for Ande Dollel Khalifa, a political movement supporting the mayor, was among them.

She said the verdict will not affect the “Manko” campaign. “We will continue the battle until he is released,” she said. “Our objective is to see him live and become the next president in 2019.”

​There are 165 seats to be filled in the National Assembly, and voters on Sunday will choose from a record 47 lists, casting their ballots by party rather than for individual candidates.   

Many see the vote as a sort of referendum on the current government of President Macky Sall and a preview of his potential challengers for the top job in 2019, although analysts say it is unlikely the ruling party will lose its majority in parliament.

There has been some violence during campaigning.

In and around Dakar, supporters of Sall’s ‘Manko’ coalition have clashed several times with members of the president’s Benno Bokk Yaakaar coalition, which is led by the current prime minister.

Senegalese political analyst Aly Fary Ndiaye says the mayor’s coalition has made his continued detention work for them.

“It is a tactic to put pressure on the government,” he said, “to question the independence of the justice system and remind Senegalese citizens of the injustice [they say] Khalifa Sall is suffering,” Ndiaye said.

New ID card system

Meanwhile, former president Wade has joined civil society groups in condemning delays in the introduction of new biometric identity cards. The new ID cards were officially launched by the government in October last year, and also are meant to function as voting cards.

Sadikh Niass, Secretary-General of the NGO African Assembly for the Defense of Human Rights, says there have been delays in getting the cards out to voters, adding that as of July 19, many voting cards had yet to be printed. He also said those that have been issued are not reaching voters because the distribution system is poorly organized.

His organization estimated that with three weeks to go before the vote, only about 40 percent of voters had collected their cards.

Presidential spokesman Hamidou Kasse told VOA the situation is not as bad as reported.

“In distribution centers there are hundreds of thousands of cards waiting for their owners. In Senegal, we have the habit of waiting until the last minute before collecting our cards,” Kasse said.

On Thursday, local media reported that the Constitutional Court approved a request from the presidency to allow citizens without new biometric cards to vote using other forms of identification.

Legislative elections in Senegal typically do not witness high voter turnout. But with all the excitement during campaigning, this time could be different.

 

Still, Abdou El Mazide Ndiaye president of Gradec, a research group promoting democracy and good governance in Africa, says the anticipation of long lines could still be a turn-off.

“Lines at the polls will be long because there are 47 lists. People will be completely discouraged by the wait,” said Mazide.

 

That’s almost double the number of lists that voters had to choose from during the last legislative elections in 2012, and there are concerns it could lead to some confusion at the polls Sunday.
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George Clooney, Guillermo del Toro on Venice Film Fest Slate

Posted on by SeeEU

This year’s Venice Film Festival will include a crime comedy by George Clooney, a Guillermo del Toro fantasy and a Darren Aronofsky thriller.

Organizers of the world’s oldest film festival announced a 21-film competition lineup Thursday that features the Clooney-directed “Suburbicon,” the story of a home invasion gone wrong that stars Matt Damon and Julianne Moore, with a script by Joel and Ethan Coen.

 

Venice’s late-summer time slot — starting a few days ahead of the Toronto festival — has made it a major awards-season springboard. In recent years it has presented the world premieres of major Oscar winners including “Spotlight” and “La La Land.”

 

This year’s contenders for Venice’s top Golden Lion award include del Toro’s “The Shape of Water,” starring Sally Hawkins as a woman who forges a relationship with a sea creature, and Aronofsky’s secrecy-shrouded “Mother!” starring Jennifer Lawrence.

 

The 74th Venice festival opens Aug. 30 in the canal-crossed Italian city with Alexander Payne’s “Downsizing,” about a man — Damon again — who decides to shrink himself. It closes Sept. 9 with Takeshi Kitano’s gangster thriller “Outrage Coda.”

 

The winner of the Golden Lion and other prizes will be decided by a jury led this year by actress Annette Bening.

 

Films in competition include “Human Flow,” a documentary about migration by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei; “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” by Ireland’s auteur of tragicomedy, Martin McDonagh; “The Third Murder,” by Japan’s Hirokazu Koreeda; and “Mektour, My Love: Canto Uno” by French-Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche, director of the Cannes winner “Blue is the Warmest Color.”

 

Competing directors are drawn from around the globe, with films from Australia’s Warwick Thornton (“Sweet Country”), Israel’s Samuel Maoz (“Foxtrot”), and Lebanon’s Ziad Doueiri (“The Insult”). But only one director among the 21 is a woman — China’s Vivian Qu, whose “Angels Wear White” centers on two girls assaulted by a man in a small seaside town.

 

Outside the main competition, high-interest entries include Fernando Leon de Aranoa’s “Loving Pablo,” starring Javier Bardem as Colombian drug baron Pablo Escobar, and Stephen Frears’ reality-based historical drama “Victoria & Abdul,” with Judi Dench as Britain’s Queen Victoria and Ai Fazal as her Indian servant Abdul Karim.

 

The streaming service Netflix, which has shaken up the business of making and distributing movies, will debut the miniseries “Our Souls at Night,” a late-life romance starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda.

 
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Iran Claims Successful Launch of Satellite-carrying Rocket

Posted on by SeeEA

Iran announced Thursday that it had successfully launched a rocket carrying a satellite into space.

State television in Iran claimed the “Simorgh” rocket, which means phoenix in Farsi, is capable of carrying a 250 kilogram satellite as far as 500 kilometers above Earth, but did not elaborate on the payload of the rocket launched Thursday.

“The Imam Khomeini Space Center was officially opened with the successful test of the Simorgh (Phoenix) space launch vehicle,” state television reported.

The launch of the rocket comes after the United States moved earlier this month to increase economic sanctions placed on Iran over its ballistic missile program.

Thursday’s launch did not violate the 2015 nuclear agreement signed by Iran and several Western nations, though the U.S. has expressed concern that the rocket technology being developed by Iran could potentially be adapted to long-range missiles.

Earlier this week, Iran announced it would open a new facility to produce missiles capable of targeting aircrafts and cruise missiles.

Iran, in the past, has successfully launched several dummy satellites. In 2013, the country said it successfully launched a monkey into space and was later able to retrieve the animal alive.

Iran hailed the monkey launch as its next step toward putting a human into space, but earlier this year, an Iranian official said the space agency cut plans to launch a human into space due to cost concerns.
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Acropolis, Other Greek Sites to Open as Guards Scrap Strike

Posted on by SeeEU

The Acropolis and other ancient monuments and museums in Athens will be open this weekend after Greek Culture Ministry employees called off a planned two-day strike.

The ministry workers’ union says it took its decision following a meeting late Wednesday with Greece’s culture minister — who, it said, took a “responsible” approach to employees’ demands.

 

The weekend strike, at the heart of the summer season, would have been a considerable embarrassment for Greece’s key tourism industry.

 

The union wants the government to honor a pledge to hire 233 archaeologists and guards, replacing employees who have retired in recent years.

 

Under the terms of Greece’s international bailouts, only a fraction of the civil servants who retire can be replaced by new hires.

 

 
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Amid Nationwide Drought, Rome Seeks Ways to Avoid Rationing

Posted on by SeeEU

Rome and its water company are working hard to avoid rationing during a nationwide drought, Italy’s environment minister said Thursday.

Scarce rain and chronically leaky aqueducts have combined this summer to hurt farmers in much of Italy and put Romans at risk for drastic water rationing.

But Environment Minister Gian Luca Galletti told reporters that while Rome’s situation “worries me most” both the city and the Acea water utility are “working out a solution that can avoid having hundreds of thousands of Roman citizens go without water.”

He called that scenario “unacceptable.” Galletti also decried as “intolerable” chronic leaks that lose some 40 percent of the water supply before it reaches users.

Last week, the governor of Lazio, the region including Rome, ordered a halt to drawing water from the drought-suffering Lake Bracciano, which supplies 8 percent of Rome’s water. Gov. Nicola Zingaretti urged Acea to find water from other reservoirs instead. Drastically decreasing water levels are posing danger to the aquatic life of the lake, 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the city.

Meteorologists say Italy experienced one of its driest springs in some 60 years and that some parts of the country had seen rainfall totals 80 percent below normal. Among the hardest-hit regions is Sardinia, which is seeking natural disaster status.

The Farmers’ lobby Coldiretti has estimated 2 billion euros ($2.3 billion) worth of damage so far to Italian agriculture. Dairy farmers are lamenting drops in milk production. Among those suffering are farmers growing tomatoes in the southeastern region of Puglia, wine grapes throughout much of Italy and those cultivating olives – all signature crops for the nation.

Another afflicted area is Parma, an area in north-central Italy renowned for Parmigiano Reggiano cheese and prized prosciutto.

Earlier this week, Vatican City turned off its fountains due to the drought.

In Rome famed, monumental fountains beloved by tourists risk being turned off.

Rome had 26 rainy days in this year’s first six months, compared to 88 in the first half of 2016, with precipitation totals in those same periods more than four times higher last year.

Making matters worse, water supply pipelines in the Rome area – famed in ancient Roman times for its aqueducts, segments of which still stand – are notoriously leaky.
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