A car bomb exploded Monday in Baghdad, killing at least 10 people and wounding 28 others.
The blast happened in the mainly Shi’ite Sadr City section of the Iraqi capital.
Members of Iraq’s security forces were among the casualties.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing.
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Hurricane Harvey has caused devastating floods in the Houston area of Texas and parts of Louisiana, home to millions of Americans. The weather disaster has overwhelmed rescuers trying to answer calls for help by stranded residents. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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Massive flooding caused by Tropical Storm Harvey along Texas’ refinery-rich coast could have long-standing and far-reaching consequences for the state’s oil and gas industry and the larger U.S. economy. The storm’s remnants left much of Houston underwater on Sunday, and the National Weather Service says it’s not over yet: Some parts of Houston and its suburbs could end up with as much as 50 inches (1.3 meters) of rain.
With the heavy precipitation expected to last for days, it’s still unclear how bad the damage will be, but there is already evidence of widespread losses. Key oil and gas facilities along the Texas Gulf Coast have temporarily shut down, and flooding in the Houston and Beaumont areas could seriously pinch gasoline supplies. Companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico have evacuated drilling platforms and rigs, crimping the flow of oil and gas.
Experts believe gasoline prices could increase as much as 25 cents a gallon.
Harvey’s toll on air travel in the U.S. is set to extend into Monday, with the tracking service FlightAware.com reporting that more than 1,400 flights already have been canceled. That’s in addition to more than 2,000 canceled over the weekend.
Economy watchers were looking to oil futures markets Sunday night and stock trading in the U.S. Monday morning for further indications of fallout.
Here’s what was known as of Sunday night:
Refineries
Nearly a third of U.S. refining capacity sits in low-lying areas along the coast from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Lake Charles, Louisiana. Beyond the shutdown of refineries at risk of a direct strike from high winds, there’s the threat of flooding and potential power outages for gasoline supplies.
Refinery outages continued to spread Sunday, with about 2.2 million barrels per day of refining capacity down or being brought down, according to analysts at S&P Global.
Valero Energy Corp., whose two big Corpus Christi refineries escaped damage, said it was working with federal and Texas agencies and its business partners to determine what infrastructure was needed to resume refinery operations.
Even before Harvey hit, the prospect of supply disruptions sent gasoline futures to $1.74 a gallon, their highest level since April, before they retreated to around $1.67 by Friday afternoon. At the pump, experts see gasoline increasing 10 cents to 25 cents a gallon.
Given the strictures faced by the refineries, “This is the dominoes starting to fall,” Patrick DeHaan, senior petroleum analyst for Gas Buddy, said Sunday. “This is sort of slowly turning out to be the worst-case scenario.”
Oil and gas
Companies have evacuated workers from oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. The U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said Sunday that workers had been removed from 105 of the 737 manned platforms used to pump oil and gas from beneath the Gulf.
The agency estimated that platforms accounting for about 22 percent of oil production and 26 percent of natural gas output in the Gulf had been shut down.
“After the storm has passed, facilities will be inspected,” the agency said in a news release. “Once all standard checks have been completed, production from undamaged facilities will be brought back on line immediately. Facilities sustaining damage may take longer to bring back on line.”
Shipping
The shipping industry also is expected to be disrupted by the worst hurricane to hit the Texas coast in more than 50 years. Shipping terminals along the Texas coast shut down as the storm approached. Port operations in Corpus Christi and Galveston closed, and the port of Houston said container terminals and general cargo facilities closed around midday Friday. Rates increased for carrying freight between the Gulf and the U.S. East Coast.
Travel
More than 1,400 flight cancellations are reported for Monday, according to FlightAware.
Houston’s two airports were closed to all flights except those connected to relief efforts. Houston Bush Intercontinental Airport was not expected to reopen Monday until noon at the earliest. Houston International Airport was scheduled to remain closed until Wednesday morning.
Airlines were offering customers the chance to reschedule trips that would take them to Houston, San Antonio or Austin from Friday through the weekend.
Utilities
Researchers at Texas A&M University estimated that the storm would knock out power for at least 1.25 million people in Texas. They said the hardest-hit areas will include Corpus Christi, which is on the coast, and San Antonio, which is about 140 miles (225 kilometers) inland.
Insurance
A firm that does forecasts for insurance companies expects wind-damage claims in the low billions of dollars, and possibly reaching as high as $6 billion.
Risk Management Solutions Inc. said storm surges and inland flooding could be an even bigger source of losses. If the firm is correct, that would put homeowners and the government-backed National Flood Insurance Program at risk.
The flood program is run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which owes the Treasury about $23 billion in funds borrowed to cover the cost of past disasters, according to a recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
Homeowner policies offered by insurance companies typically don’t cover flood damage, yet a relatively small percentage of homeowners have flood insurance through the federal program.
Property data firm CoreLogic estimated that insured losses for home and commercial properties, as of Friday, would be $1 billion to $2 billion from wind and storm-surge damage.
More than 1,000 people have participated in protests in Romania’s capital and other cities to show opposition to against proposed changes to the judicial system.
Demonstrators gathered outside government offices in Bucharest on Sunday called the ruling Social Democratic Party “the red plague” and yelled “A government of thieves and Mafioso!”
People took to the streets in half a dozen cities around the country to protest the proposals submitted by Justice Minister Tudorel Toader.
Toader recommended having the president no longer appoint the general prosecutor and the chief anti-corruption prosecutor, a main function of Romania’s presidency.
He also suggested a process to punish prosecutors and judges for erroneous rulings and prosecutions.
Romanian President Klaus Iohannis has criticized the proposal. Protesters said it would slow efforts to root out corruption.
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More than 1,000 people have died from the mudslide and flood that hit Sierra Leone’s capital nearly two weeks ago, a local leader and a minister said Sunday during services honoring the disaster’s victims.
The government had earlier put the death toll for the Aug. 14 mudslide at 450 dead, while rescuers and aid groups warned that many of the more than 600 people missing would likely not survive.
“Over 1,000 perished in the mudslide and flood disaster, and we will never know the exact number now,” Elenoroh Jokomie Metzger, the head of the women of Regent, said. Regent is an area on the outskirts of Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, where the mudslide hit.
Hundreds of burials have taken place, while rescue and recovery efforts have continued through rain that could bring fresh tragedy due to unsafe housing conditions.
Reverend Bishop Emeritus Arnold Temple, who delivered the Sunday sermon at a Methodist church near Regent, said an accurate count was important for accountability.
“It may well be over 1,000 Sierra Leoneans we are mourning now. But why should about 1,000 of our compatriots’ lives end tragically like this?” Temple said. “Who should we really blame? We are bound at a point in the blame game to attribute the blame so that corrective measures can be put in place so that never again should we allow this to happen.”
First lady Sia Koroma, wife of President Ernest Bai Koroma, also spoke during the ceremonies.
“I stand here with a heavy heart. We have been through many calamities in our country,” she said. “We should all do self-examination and learn to be obedient to man-made laws, especially when the government plans to take action for the development of the country.”
Thousands of people living in areas at risk during heavy rains have been evacuated. Aid groups are delivering supplies and helping provide clean water to prevent a health crisis.
Some critics accuse Sierra Leone’s government of failing to learn from past disasters in Freetown, where many poor areas are near sea level and lack good drainage. The capital is also plagued by unregulated construction on its hillsides.
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The killing of an American journalist in South Sudan violates international humanitarian law and should be investigated, according to an international human rights group.
South Sudan’s leaders should “condemn this killing, investigate how it happened and hold those responsible to account,” Jehanne Henry, senior Africa researcher for Human Rights Watch, told The Associated Press.
On Saturday morning, 28-year-old freelance journalist, Christopher Allen, was killed when fighting erupted between opposition and government forces along the border between South Sudan and Uganda.
The rebel forces launched a coordinated attack on several towns along the Ugandan border, said the opposition’s deputy spokesman, Col. Lam Paul Gabriel. Allen and two other journalists were embedded with the rebels on a two-week mission and they had come from Kampala, Gabriel told The Associated Press.
Gabriel alleged that Allen “was targeted and killed by the government forces for photographing the fight.” He sent his condolences to Allen’s family and friends.
Army spokesman, Col. Domic Chol Santo, dismissed the opposition account as “rubbish,” saying the government forces acted in self-defense and Allen was killed in the crossfire near the town of Kaya, 2 kilometers (1 mile) from Bazi.
Allen, a freelance journalist, had been based on and off in Kyiv, Ukraine, for several years, said a member of the Ukrainian National Guard and a friend of Allen’s during his time in Ukraine.
“He actually struck me as an intelligent fellow, open-minded,” said the Ukrainian soldier who insisted on anonymity for security reasons.
He said Allen had embedded with a paramilitary group before embedding with his unit for three weeks in March, 2015, and that Allen told him he was interested in joining the military in the future.
South Sudan is one of the harshest climates in the world for journalists, according to press freedom groups. Recently the government has cracked down on the press, blocking several South Sudan news websites.
In the past few months, 15 South Sudanese journalists have been detained, beaten or denied access to information, according to the Union of Journalists in South Sudan and more than 20 foreign journalists have been denied entry or kicked out of the country.
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Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama has named a restructured Cabinet with a goal of increasing the country’s economic growth from 3.8 to 5 percent in four years.
Rama on Sunday told his Socialist Party leadership that his Cabinet would be reduced from 20 to 14 ministerial posts, making it “a smaller but more cooperative one.”
The new structure merges the finance ministry with the economy ministry, and the energy ministry with the transport and infrastructure ministry. A new ministerial post has been created to oversee the Albanian diaspora and to coordinate with businesses.
Most of the appointees are holdovers from the previous government, but serving in different positions. Four are new appointments. The new Cabinet preserves an equal number of women and men.
The left wing Socialists secured a second mandate in a June election, winning 74 seats in the 140-seat parliament and can run the government without allies.
The opposition Democratic party won 43 seats while the Socialist Movement for Integration Party that was in Rama’s governing coalition in the previous mandate secured 19 seats. Four other seats were won by a smaller political grouping.
The Democrats said the Cabinet picks represented “the return to power of the former communist elite” that would lead to “deepening Edi Rama’s and a small group’s private reigning.”
Rooting out corruption, fighting drug trafficking, improving pay and lowering unemployment are some of the key issues in Albania, a NATO member since 2009 that wants to launch membership negotiations with the European Union next year.
The new Cabinet will be subject to a vote when parliament convenes early next month.
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U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says President Donald Trump, who has faced criticism over his response to a recent white nationalist rally in Virginia, “speaks for himself” on his values.
Tillerson appeared on Fox News Sunday, and was asked by anchor Chris Wallace about a United Nations committee criticizing the Trump administration for its failure to condemn “racist violent events.”
Tillerson said “we express America’s values from the State Department. We represent the American people, we represent America’s values, our commitment to freedom, our commitment to equal treatment of people the world over and that message has never changed.”
In Trump’s reaction to the rally he denounced bigotry, but blamed “many sides” for violence that erupted in the city of Charlottesville.
Pressed by Wallace on whether he was separating himself from Trump on the matter Tillerson said, “I have spoken, I have made my own comments as to our values as well in a speech I gave to the State Department this past week.”
In the August 18 speech Tillerson condemned racism, saying “hate is not an American value.” He added, “We must pursue reconciliation, understanding and respect regardless of skin color, ethnicity or religious or political views.”
Last week, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination issued an appeal to the United States to repudiate racially-motivated crimes and hate speech following the rally in Charlottesville and warned a failure to do so could spark more deadly violence.
Tillerson’s comments on Fox News Sunday sparked a swift reaction on social media, including this Tweet from former State Department counselor and political scientist Eliot Cohen. “I do believe that the Secretary of State just tossed the President of the United States under the bus. ”
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A Jordanian official said Sunday that Jordan is negotiating with Germany over the legal status of German troops to be stationed in the kingdom, amid reports that disagreements delayed deployment.
The German magazine Der Spiegel reported that Germany seeks immunity in Jordan for 250 soldiers who are part of the U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State group extremists. The report says Jordan balked at the demand.
The Jordanian official said talks with Germany are “subject to international diplomatic rules” and “equal mutual treatment.” He demanded anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters on the issue.
Germany’s Defense Ministry played down the report saying the negotiation process is ongoing and that “we are in fruitful talks with Jordan.”
“We already started the deployment… and are expecting to be fully operational by October,” said a spokesman for the German Defense Ministry, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with department policy.
Germany chose Jordan after previous host Turkey prevented German lawmakers from visiting the troops there.
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s new aid chief, Mark Green, kicked off an African tour in Sudan on Sunday, where he will assess whether Khartoum has done enough to get help into conflict areas to deserve eased sanctions.
It is Green’s first trip as administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development, a job he began two weeks ago amid talk of budget cuts and a wide-reaching reorganization of the agency by the Trump administration.
He is due to visit aid projects in drought-hit zones including neighboring Ethiopia, at a time when Washington is considering an estimated 30-percent cut in the budget of the State Department and USAID.
But his priorities will also include weighing whether Washington should reform one of its main diplomatic fronts in the region – a raft of sanctions imposed first over Khartoum’s perceived support of global terrorism, later its violent suppression of rebels in Darfur.
U.S. officials have said existing limited steps to ease sanctions are meant to recognize progress in Sudan, particularly moves to reduce internal conflict and increase cooperation with Washington in the war against terrorism.
Just before leaving office, former U.S. President Barack Obama temporarily eased penalties against Sudan, suspending a trade embargo, unfreezing assets and removing financial sanctions.
In July, the Trump administration postponed for three months a decision on whether to remove the restrictions full-time — giving it an Oct. 12 deadline to make up its mind.
Part of Green’s fact-finding mission, say the officials, will be to assess whether the Khartoum government is letting aid into Darfur and other rebellious border areas, one of several conditions that needs to be met.
Speaking to U.N. representatives and other donors hours after his arrival in Khartoum, Green said his visit showed the importance of improved humanitarian access.
“This review period is not the sole reason I am here, but it is one,” he said. “I’m here to listen, learn, and gather information to take back to Washington as the administration evaluates Sudan’s progress,” he said.
Green assured donors that the United States would not walk walk away from funding the humanitarian crisis, despite the proposed budget cuts.
“The United States will not walk away from our commitment to humanitarian assistance, and we will always stand with people everywhere when disaster strikes, for that is who we are is Americans,” said Green.
Any lifting of economic penalties would be a major turnaround for the government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who once played host to Osama bin Laden and is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of orchestrating genocide in Darfur.
Washington has not weakened its condemnation of the tactics the Sudanese government used in Darfur — and Sudan remains on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, alongside Iran and Syria.
But the different signals on sanctions have come at a time of seismic changes in the region — U.S. security officials have praised Khartoum’s more recent help in fighting al Qaeda and dealing with the turmoil in northern neighbor Libya.
Diplomatic calculations have also changed since South Sudan collapsed into chaos after declaring independence from Sudan in 2011.
Green, a 57-year-old former four-term Republican congressman from Wisconsin, served as U.S. Ambassador to Tanzania under President George W. Bush, and helped craft key areas of Bush’s signature AIDS program, PEPFAR.
Earlier this month, he told Reuters he needed to do more with less as he faced the prospect of budget cuts, and had to prove to Trump that development assistance could further his “America First” agenda.
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A 51-year-old German woman died Sunday from injuries suffered in the Aug. 17 vehicle attack in Barcelona, raising the overall death toll in Spain’s recent attacks to 16, health officials in Catalonia said.
The woman died in the intensive care unit of Barcelona’s Hospital del Mar, according to the regional health department.
The latest death raises the toll to 14 in the van attack in Barcelona’s popular Las Ramblas boulevard. Another man was stabbed to death in a carjacking that night as the van driver made his getaway, and another woman died in an Aug. 18 vehicle-and-knife attack in the nearby coastal town of Cambrils.
More than 120 people were wounded in the attacks. Authorities say 24 remain hospitalized, five of them in critical condition.
On Saturday, an estimated 500,000 peace marchers flooded the heart of Barcelona shouting “I’m not afraid” — a public rejection of violence following extremist attacks, Spain’s deadliest in more than a decade.
Emergency workers, taxis drivers, police and ordinary citizens who helped immediately after the Las Ramblas attack led the march. They carried a street-wide banner with black capital letters reading “No Tinc Por,” which means “I’m not afraid” in the local Catalan language.
The phrase has grown from a spontaneous civic answer to violence into a slogan that Spain’s entire political class has unanimously embraced.
Spain’s central, regional and local authorities tried to send an image of unity Saturday by walking behind the emergency workers, despite earlier criticism that national and regional authorities had not shared information about the attackers well enough with each other.
In a first for a Spanish monarch, King Felipe VI joined a public demonstration, walking in Barcelona along with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and other officials. A separate anti-violence rally was held in the northern town of Ripoll, home to many of the attackers.
Eight suspects in the attacks are dead, two are jailed under preliminary charges of terrorism and homicide and two more were freed by a judge but will remain under investigation.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Sunday the firing of three ballistic missiles by North Korea this week was a provocative act but that the United States will continue to seek a peaceful resolution.
“We do view it as a provocative act against the United States and our allies,” Tillerson said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” “We’re going to continue our peaceful pressure campaign as I have described it, working with allies, working with China as well to see if we can bring the regime in Pyongyang to the negotiating table.”
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Tropical storm Harvey has left at least two people dead as flooding and tornadoes presented continuing danger for the residents of southeastern Texas.
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The mayor of Houston called on residents to “do their part” to ensure minimal loss of life in southeastern Texas as tropical storm Harvey caused unprecedented floods.
“People are wanting the assistance right now, they’re dialing 911 and sometimes are frustrated they can’t get through, I understand that. But what I will say to you is that if we all work together – first responders, neighbors, good samaritans out there – the additional resources are being made available and are being deployed as we speak in different quadrants of the city,” Sylvester Turner told a press briefing Sunday. “If we remain calm, and if everybody does his or her part, we will get through this with minimum loss of life, and this city will get right back on track and we’ll move right forward.”
IN PICTURES: Unprecedented Rains in Southeastern Texas
Turner said that over 2,000 calls asking for help in had been received as of Sunday. He also detailed a number of additional resources – including opening up community centers to be used as shelter and adding 40 more boats to rescue operations.
Turner also echoed police warnings to residents to go to their roofs, and not their attics should their homes begin flooding.
The National Weather Service in Houston called the flooding in the region “catastrophic, unprecedented, and life threatening” Sunday and warned that it could continue into next week.
At least two people died over the weekend as flooding and tornadoes presented continuing danger for the residents of southeastern Texas.
The National Weather Service has confirmed that at least seven tornadoes have touched down in the Houston area since Friday evening.
“It’s impossible not to feel overwhelmed,” VOA’s Celia Mendoza said Sunday from Houston.
Celia Mendoza’s Video Report From Houston
“Everything is closed,” she said. “People are concerned about what is happening to them — to their neighbors, they’re concerned about their homes,” she said, noting that many people were stuck where they work and trying to keep in touch with their families at home.
Casualties
In addition to the two fatalities, Harvey injured at least 14 people. In the area between Corpus Christi and Houston, many people feared that toll was only the beginning. Texas officials say they expect to find further victims, however, as the storm moves inland.
“This is a situation that Houstonions have dealt with before, but this is one of the worst if not the worst that Houston has suffered,” Texas governor Greg Abbott said on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday, adding that rescuing as many people as possible is “our top goal”.
Speaking on CNN Sunday, FEMA administrator Brock Long said that the federal emergency services is “going to be there for years”, calling this disaster a “landmark event”.
President Donald Trump took to Twitter Sunday to say that “great coordination” between multiple agencies has enabled thousands of victims to be rescued.
Trump also tweeted that he plans to visit the destruction in Texas “as soon as that trip can be made without causing disruption.”
Torrential rains
Harvey, the fiercest hurricane to hit the U.S. in more than a decade, with winds of 209 kph at the time of landfall, has already dumped more than 50 centimeters of rain in some places and is predicted to move through a 600-kilometer-wide swath of the Texas coast.
The storm made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in southeast Texas, near the small town of Rockport not far from the city of Corpus Christi, slamming the state’s Gulf Coast with strong winds and heavy rain over hundreds of kilometers of coastline. Since then it has gradually weakened.
Tens of thousands of Texas residents have fled inland to avoid wind and flooding from the threatening storm.
Governor Abbott said more than 1,000 state personnel have been assigned to search-and-rescue operations and they’ve already made several rescues, hoisting people into helicopters to avoid floodwaters.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is readying supplies and search and rescue teams at its regional coordination center in Denton, Texas to send out as soon as conditions permit.
The Islamic State news agency Aamaq has claimed the Brussels attacker who assaulted three soldiers with a knife as an Islamic State group soldier.
In a statement Sunday, it said he carried out the Friday evening attack in response to calls to target countries of the coalition that is fighting IS.
Belgian prosecutors have opened an attempted terrorist murder probe after attacker assaulted the soldiers while shouting “Allahu akbar!” — Arabic for “God is great.” He was shot dead by troops.
The Federal Prosecutor’s Office said the man was known to police for assault charges but had no previous terror-related offenses. The suspect, a Belgian citizen of Somali origin, was also carrying a fake firearm and copies of the Quran.
IS often claims attacks by people who have no known link to the group.
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Britain’s main opposition Labour Party is announcing a policy shift which opens the possibility of the country remaining in the European Union’s single market and customs union for several years as part of a “soft” Brexit, a spokesman said on Saturday.
The party would propose the same “basic terms” as Britain’s current relationship with the EU during a transition period following Brexit in 2019, and after that for all options to be open, a spokesman for Labour said.
His comments came in response to a report in Britain’s Guardian and sister newspaper Observer in which shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer backed “continued membership of the EU single market beyond March 2019, when Britain leaves the EU,” so that Labour would become the party of a “soft Brexit” and offer a smoother economic outcome.
Jeremy Corbyn’s party would also “leave open the option of the UK remaining a member of the customs union and single market for good, beyond the end of the transitional period”, the paper said.
However, a longer-term arrangement would only be considered if a Labour government could by that point have persuaded the rest of the EU to “agree to a special deal on immigration and changes to freedom of movement rules,” the paper said.
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A planned right-wing rally in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge that was downgraded to a news conference at a small park fizzled further on Saturday, after San Francisco police swarmed the park and city workers erected a fence around it.
An organizer for the group Patriot Prayer later spoke in suburban Pacifica with a handful of supporters, after civic leaders and police in San Francisco repeatedly voiced concerns that they would draw angry counter-protesters and spark violence in the area known as the cradle of the free speech movement.
Organizer Joey Gibson denied his group was looking for trouble. He said members had received anonymous threats on social media and feared civic leaders and law enforcement would fail to protect them.
“My hope is to be able to talk to normal citizens without all the extremists,” Gibson, who identifies as Japanese American, said at the news conference.
Other speakers included African-Americans, a Latino and a Samoan-American. Several said they support Donald Trump and want to join with moderates to promote understanding and free speech.
The pivots by the group didn’t deter more than 1,000 left-wing counterprotesters from descending on Alamo Square park, where they suspected right-wing supporters still might show up.
“San Francisco as a whole, we are a liberal city and this is not a place for hate or any sort of bigotry of any kind,” Bianca Harris said. “I think it’s a really powerful message that we’re sending to people who come here to try to spew messages of hate that it’s just not welcome in this city.”
Police closed the park early in the day and looked on in riot gear as the demonstrators gathered around its perimeter waving signs condemning white supremacists and chanting, “Whose streets? Our streets!” Hundreds of others took to the streets in the Castro neighborhood.
Earlier in the week, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee raised concerns that Patriot Prayer would attract hate speech and potential violence. U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a fellow Democrat who represents San Francisco, called the planned rally a “white supremacist” event.
Gibson said his group disavows racism and hatred and insisted his gathering would be peaceful. He said Saturday in a phone interview that he felt like San Francisco’s Democratic leaders had shut him down.
“They’re definitely doing a great job of trying to make sure my message doesn’t come out,” he said.
Members of the group ended the news conference abruptly when they heard members of an anti-fascist movement were headed to Pacifica.
The San Francisco Bay Area is considered a cradle for freedom of speech, and police in San Francisco have traditionally given demonstrators a wide berth.
Student activism was born during the 1960s free-speech movement at Berkeley, when thousands of students at the university mobilized to demand that the school drop its ban on political activism.
However, the deadly confrontation in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Aug. 12 during a rally of white supremacists led San Francisco police and civil leaders to rethink their response to protests.
When Gibson canceled the Golden Gate rally on Friday, he said his followers would instead attend an anti-Marxist rally on Sunday in nearby Berkeley. But a short time later, the organizer of that rally called it off.
Organizer Amber Cummings said in a lengthy statement issued via Facebook that she had “grave concerns for the safety of the people attending my event.”
Cummings said the event was planned “to speak out against the political violence happening to people who do not agree” with left-wing ideology, and that the meaning was being lost as rhetoric around the rally escalated.
The left-wing group By Any Means Necessary, which has been involved in violent confrontations, had vowed to shut down the Berkeley rally.
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Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who is also a former governor of Ukraine’s Odesa region, has accused the authorities of Georgia and Ukraine of planning to accuse of planning a coup in Georgia.
Saakashvili wrote on Facebook on Saturday that the Georgian authorities “in complete coordination with officials in Ukraine” were planning to make the accusation soon.
“They promised [Ukrainian President Petro] Poroshenko that they would file the charges before September 10,” he wrote.
Saakashvili said the charges would give Ukrainian authorities “a legal basis” for detaining him if he entered Ukraine.
He added that the charges were risible and politically motivated.
Earlier the same day, Nika Gvaramia, the head of Georgia’s Rustavi-2 television, said he believed charges of plotting a coup might be filed against Saakashvili.
Background
Saakashvili, 49, once a lauded pro-Western reformist, served two terms as Georgia’s president, from January 2004 to November 2013.
His popularity declined toward the end of his second term, in part because of a five-day war with Russia during which Moscow’s forces drove deep into the South Caucasus country, and his long-ruling party was voted out of power in a 2012 parliamentary election.
In 2015, Saakashvili forfeited his Georgian citizenship by accepting an offer from his old college friend, Poroshenko, to become governor of Ukraine’s southwestern Odessa Oblast province — a post that required Ukrainian citizenship.
Saakashvili, who harbors Ukrainian political ambitions, resigned as governor of Odessa in November 2016, complaining of official obstruction and corruption. He accused Poroshenko of dishonesty and said his central government had sabotaged democratic reforms required for membership to the European Union and NATO.
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Several people have reportedly been detained in Moscow at a sanctioned demonstration in support of internet freedom.
One demonstrator was detained on Saturday while wearing a T-shirt reading, “Putin is worse than Hitler,” referring to President Vladimir Putin.
Several other demonstrators were detained while wearing symbols supporting equal rights for the LGBT community.
Some at the rally, which had been approved by local officials, shouted, “Russia will be free,” and “Russia without censorship.”
According to Moscow officials, about 1,000 people attended the rally.
Similar demonstrations were held in several other Russian cities, including St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Izhevsk and others.
Demonstrators were calling for changes to legislation restricting the internet that were included in the so-called Yarovaya package of laws — named after conservative State Duma member Irina Yarovaya.
Last month, Russia’s parliament approved legislation that forbids the use of certain web tools that allow internet users to access certain websites that have been banned by officials.
Protesters also called for the release of people jailed for purportedly disseminating “extremist” material via the internet and for the resignations of the leadership of Roskomnadzor, the state agency that monitors and regulates the internet.
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Hundreds of thousands of peace marchers flooded the heart of Barcelona on Saturday shouting “I’m not afraid” — a public rejection of violence following extremist attacks that killed 15 people, Spain’s deadliest in more than a decade.
Emergency workers, taxis drivers, police and ordinary citizens who helped immediately after the attack on August 17 in the city’s famed Las Ramblas boulevard led the march. They carried a streetwide banner with black capital letters reading “No Tinc Por,” which means “I’m not afraid” in the local Catalan language.
The phrase has grown from a spontaneous civic answer to violence into a slogan that Spain’s entire political class has unanimously embraced.
Authorities participate
Spain’s central, regional and local authorities tried to send an image of unity Saturday by walking behind emergency workers, despite earlier criticism that national and regional authorities had not shared information about the attackers well enough with each other.
In a first for a Spanish monarch, King Felipe VI joined a public demonstration, along with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and other Spanish and Catalan regional officials.
Still, some citizens whistled their displeasure as authorities passed by, and they held banners criticizing the king’s role in promoting military exports to Saudi Arabia.
Barcelona police said 500,000 people showed up for the march Saturday.
The Islamic State group has claimed the vehicle attacks in Barcelona and hours later in the coastal town of Cambrils that left 15 dead and over 120 wounded. The investigation into the Islamic extremist cell behind the attacks has shown that the group planned even more deadly carnage but accidentally blew up a house in Alcanar where explosives were being built and gas tanks were being stored.
Eight suspects are dead, two are jailed under preliminary charges of terrorism and homicide, and two more were freed by a judge but will remain under investigation.
Medical authorities said Saturday that 22 people wounded in the attacks were still being treated in hospitals. Six remained in critical condition.
Condemnation from Muslims
In the northeastern town of Ripoll, home for many of the attackers, members of the local Muslim community and other residents gathered Saturday in a central square to condemn the deadly attacks. Located at the foothills of the Pyrenees, the town is where most suspects came under the influence of a radical imam, investigators say.
The sister of two of the alleged extremists gave an emotional speech thanking her neighbors for the support shown to Muslim families in Ripoll.
“We share the same grief and the [need] for an understanding of what happened,” said Hafida Oukabir, whose younger brother Moussa was shot dead by police in Cambrils and whose elder brother Driss is under custody facing terrorism charges. “We must all work together to stop this from ever happening again.”
Her sobbing speech was met with applause.
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Hundreds of protesters gathered in front of the Israeli attorney general’s home Saturday to demand he indict Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on corruption charges.
The weekly vigils have become the vanguard of a grass-roots protest movement against Netanyahu’s alleged financial misdeeds and illicit ties to executives in media, international business and Hollywood.
Netanyahu has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and called the accusations against him a witch hunt orchestrated by a hostile media. The scandal has yet to threaten his lengthy rule, but has harmed his public approval ratings.
Saturday night’s demonstration came a week after a pair of high-profile organizers were arrested and after Israel’s Supreme Court ruled the protests could continue as long as they didn’t exceed 500 people or include the use of loudspeakers in the residential area.
Louder, bigger protest
Israeli police said far more than that number arrived Saturday, with 2,000 attending. They also said protesters violated the other conditions set by the court, using loudspeakers and spreading out to adjacent streets.
What began as a gathering of a handful of good-governance activists outside the home has now, in its 40th week, swelled into a powerful display of flag-waving Israelis each Saturday night that has drawn heavy media coverage, sparked counter pro-Netanyahu protests and unnerved police.
Israel law says the prime minister can be removed only by parliament, though the Supreme Court has since ruled that government ministers and mayors had to resign if indicted.
Israel’s justice minister has said the prime minister is not compelled to do so. But should the attorney general issue an indictment, there will be a legal challenge and public pressure for him to step aside. The weekly protests are ostensibly aimed at encouraging an indictment.
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In a surprise announcement on Saturday, Iraqi officials said they are hours or days away from recapturing Tal Afar from Islamic State militants after less than a week of battle. VOA’s Heather Murdock is on the scene with the Iraqi forces’ Golden Division in Tal Afar.
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The way Bana Umar tells it, VOA and other broadcasters helped convince him to leave Boko Haram.
Until the night of August 18, Umar was a fighter for the Islamist radical group, living at a camp in the vast Sambisa Forest, one of the group’s long-time strongholds in northeastern Nigeria.
The experience was certainly exciting. Umar says he served as a bodyguard for a commander, Abu Geidam, who he describes as very close to Abubakar Shekau, Boko Haram’s best known leader.
And he saw action across Nigeria’s Borno State. “I have been to war about six times,” he says. “I fought in Wulari. I fought in Bita. I participated in the fighting around Chad. I was in the group that repelled Nigerian soldiers whenever they ventured into Sambisa.”
But his conscience was just as active as his gun. When asked if what Boko Haram does is good and right, he says it is not, because the group attacks people “mercilessly and unjustly,” and in his view, manipulates Islam to its own violent ends.
Radio prompted him to make an escape plan. Umar says he heard promises from the Nigerian chief of army staff, General Tukur Buratai, that defectors from Boko Haram would be welcomed, not punished. And he heard how Boko Haram’s deadly ambushes and suicide bombings were received in the outside world.
“Many of us listened to radio stations like BBC and VOA,” he says. “I listened to these radio stations frequently to the extent that when I laid down to sleep I would be thinking of what I heard. I realized that all our activities were evil. We killed. We stole. We dispossessed people of their properties in the name of religion. But what we are doing is not religion. Finally I got fed up with the group.”
Umar is now in the Borno state capital, Maiduguri, after fleeing the Boko Haram camp. He described his experiences this week in an interview with VOA Hausa Service reporter Haruna Dauda. His comments, translated from Hausa, provide insight into how the militants recruit and retain fighters and are managing to survive in the face of a multi-nation offensive.
Persuaded to join, scared to leave
Umar is 27 years old and hails from Banki, a town on Nigeria’s border with Cameroon. Until 2014, he made his living as a cell phone repairman and burning CDs.
But that year, Boko Haram overran the town. Umar says his friend, Abu Mujaheed, lured him into becoming a member of the group. All Nigerians are infidels, and only the followers of Abubakar Shekau are true Muslims, Mujaheed said. Join and you can fight to kill all the infidels.
Umar joined, but says he quickly got scared and wanted to run. He didn’t, he says, because Abu Mujaheed told him he would be killed if he tried to escape.
Asked this week if that was true, Umar said there is no doubt about it. “Even mere rumor or allegation that someone is contemplating leaving the group would lead to the killing of the person,” he says.
He says Boko Haram also discouraged defectors by telling them General Buratai’s promise of amnesty for any escapee was a ruse.
There are more than 1,000 Boko Haram members who would like to leave the group, Umar says. “There are many people that were abducted from their home towns who don’t know the way back to their places of origin. They [Boko Haram leaders] preach to such people not to leave, as if it was divine for them to be there.”
He adds: “Even some original members of the sect now want to leave because soldiers have intensified the war against them unlike in the past.”
All Boko Haram members must take new names when they join the group, and Bana Umar’s name was changed to Abu Mustapha. He says he became a fighter, not a commander. He said the militants were living in the Jimiya section of the Sambisa Forest, which, according to him, was the headquarters for Boko Haram.
At one time, he implies, living conditions were decent. In 2014, Boko Haram ruled large parts of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states, and could operate almost at will.
Now, he says, “Life is difficult. It is not what it used to be in the past. Food is difficult for everyone.”
Some militants grow their own food, he says. “But even when you farm, your leader could take all your farm produce from you in the name of religion. You are always told that your leader has rights over all you have and yourself,” he says.
Boko Haram leaders also use religion as a prod to violence, he says.
“They use religion to tell us to kill with the promise of going to paradise. Leaders quote profusely from the Quran and the sayings of the prophet [Mohammed] to support their arguments. As they explain to make us understand their own point of view as the absolute truth, we must keep saying Allah is great, Allah is great. Then we would go out to kill,” he says.
A call to ‘repent’
Boko Haram has killed at least 20,000 people across Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger since it launched its insurgency against the Nigerian government in 2009. Attacks and bombings continue, even though the joint task force sponsored by those countries and Benin has stripped Boko Haram of nearly all the territory it once controlled, which leader Abubakar Shekau said would form the base of a “caliphate.”
With the weight of the group’s deeds bearing down on him, Bana Umar felt a growing need to flee. He didn’t act, however, until someone else encouraged him to believe what General Buratai promised.
He escaped on the night of August 18 with that person — the wife of his commander, Abu Geidam. On the 20th, they turned themselves in at a Nigerian army base in Maiduguri.
Asked what he would say to Boko Haram fighters still in the Sambisa Forest, Umar says: “I am calling them to repent, especially those who want to come out but are afraid… Let people know that soldiers would not do anything to whoever voluntarily repents. I came out and no one harms me. Not one single soldier lays his hand on me.”
Nigerian officials are currently debriefing Bana Umar, as they do with all Boko Haram members who leave the group voluntarily. When they finish, he will be reintegrated into Nigerian society, although not in his hometown of Banki. He will be taken to another location where he isn’t known, to make a fresh start.
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