May 2018 - Page 24 of 24

UK Lawmakers Back Measure on Sanctions for Human Rights Abuses

Posted on 05/01/2018 by SeeEU

Britain will be able to impose sanctions on people who commit gross human rights violations under a so-called “Magnitsky amendment” backed by members of parliament on Tuesday.

The amendment to a new Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering

Bill going through parliament passed without a vote, because it was backed both by the ruling Conservatives and the main opposition Labor Party.

Lawmakers referred to it during their debate as the Magnitsky amendment, in reference to Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was arrested in 2008 after alleging that Russian officials were involved in large-scale tax fraud. He died in a Moscow prison in 2009 after complaining of mistreatment.

The amendment is not specifically aimed at Russians, but it comes at a time of crisis in relations between Britain and Russia following a nerve agent attack in England on a Russian ex-spy and his daughter, which London blames on Moscow.

Russia has denied any involvement in the attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal. The standoff has led to tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats and fiery rhetoric on both sides.

Boris Johnson, Britain’s foreign minister, called the passage of the amendment through the House of Commons an “important moment.”

“These [provisions] will allow U.K. to act against those responsible for serious offenses worldwide. U.K. stands up for human rights globally,” he said on Twitter.

The United States passed a law known as the Magnitsky Act in 2012 under which it has imposed visa bans and asset freezes on Russian officials linked to the lawyer’s death.

Prime Minister Theresa May spoke May 14 about bringing forward a Magnitsky Act-style amendment in one of her statements responding to the attack on the Skripals.

Bill Browder, an investment fund manager who employed Magnitsky and has led a campaign to punish Russian officials he blames for the lawyer’s death, took to Twitter to thank lawmakers who played a part in the British Magnitsky amendment.

“Thank you for making a UK Magnitsky Act happen,” he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has dismissed allegations that Magnitsky’s death was linked to mistreatment, saying he died of heart failure. A Russian court sentenced Browder in absentia in December to nine years in prison after finding him guilty of deliberate bankruptcy and tax evasion, allegations

Browder denies.
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Chad Votes for New Constitution Giving President More Power

Posted on 05/01/2018 by SeeAF

Chad’s parliament has voted in support of a new constitution that would abolish the prime minister and allow the longtime president to serve two more terms.

Lawyer Senoussi Ali Abdoulaye tells Chadian National Radio the vote means more power will be concentrated in the hands of President Idriss Deby, who has been in office since 1990.

Opposition members and civil society groups demonstrated against the new constitution, which was approved in a 132-2 vote Monday.

It abolishes the constitutional council and high court of justice and introduces a six-year presidential term, replacing the current five-year one. It also re-imposes a two-term limit that will not be retroactively applied, meaning that Deby can serve two more terms after 2021 elections.

Deby must sign off on the parliament vote.
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Armenians Skeptical After Ruling Party Blocks Protest Leader’s PM Bid

Posted on 05/01/2018 by SeeEU

Former government officials and citizens in Armenia expressed reservations about the ruling party’s decision to block a bid by opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan to become prime minister, setting up a standoff between the elite, which has run the state for more than a decade, and thousands of Pashinyan’s supporters camped on the streets.

Armenia’s former defense minister, Seyran Ohanyan, told VOA’s Armenian Service he expected to see Pashinyan elected prime minister, which in his opinion would have resolved the unfolding political crisis.

Armenia’s parliament voted 45-to-55 against Pashinyan, leaving him eight votes short of the majority needed to capture the South Caucasian nation’s most powerful office.

“Nikol Pashinyan, indeed, deserved to be the prime minister in this new situation and implement changes expected and demanded by people,” Ohanyan said.

He also stressed that the ruling party’s stated rationale for not appointing Pashinyan — that electing an opposition figure as prime minister would imperil national security — should be questioned.

“Otherwise, we will never have any political changes!” Ohanyan told VOA. “Just the opposite, political changes are the major pillar of the military strength of our country, which is linked to the economy. Whoever raises the economy, will also help the army.”

While observers have expressed fear that any unexpected political turmoil resulting from Tuesday’s parliamentary sessions could destabilize the Moscow-allied nation, which has been locked in a territorial dispute with Azerbaijan for decades, Pashinyan had met Sunday with Russian lawmakers, telling them his premiership would not threaten Yerevan’s close ties with Moscow.

Stepan Demirchyan, Armenia’s former opposition leader 2004 presidential candidate, said Pashinyan’s “movement can’t be stopped.”

“This is a continuation of the previous struggle, and it should reach its logical goal,” he told VOA. “I have no doubts Nikol Pashinyan will eventually become a prime minister. Yet, the major goal is to have snap and fair elections in our country.”

Citizens react

Ambassador Richard Kauzlarich, the former top U.S. diplomat to Azerbaijan, told VOA he thinks the Armenian people should have the right to decide their own fate by themselves.

The more external powers involved, he said, the higher the level of uncertainty.

“The outside powers — in particular, Moscow and Washington — need to stand back from this process, and that will be easier to do for Washington than for Moscow,” he said.

People on the streets of Yerevan, who did not want to share their names, seemed to echo these opinions.

“There is no alternative. Nikol should sit on the prime minister chair,” said one pub patron as he watched the political coverage on television.

“The people’s candidate should be the prime minister,” said a woman sitting nearby.

Pashinyan, who addressed a rally of his supporters immediately after the vote, vowed to continue his movement.

On Monday, Pashinyan promised to stage nationwide strikes if the legislature failed to appoint him.

The 42-year-old opposition lawmaker, who had led 11 days of street demonstrations over an alleged power grab by former prime minister Serzh Sargsyan that threw the former Soviet republic into a political crisis, was widely expected to receive the 53 votes required to secure the post from the 105-member parliament.

Former president Sargsyan

As the only candidate officially nominated for prime minister, Pashinyan, a member of the Yelk or “Way Out”-led alliance, which holds 47 votes among its loosely allied opposition constituents, had secured assurances of further support from Sargsyan’s ruling Republican Party.

Sargsyan, who was elected prime minister by parliament on April 17 — some eight days after his two-term presidency ended due to term limits — previously had said he would not seek to become prime minister after recently-implemented constitutional changes, which he championed during his presidency, made the office of prime minister more powerful than that of the presidency he was forced to vacate.

According to statistics by the United Nations, more than 11 percent of Armenians live below the poverty line, earning less than 1,530 Armenian drams ($3.20) per day, and as Bloomberg reports, emigre remittances from Armenia’s 8-million-strong diaspora comprise 14 percent of national GDP.

Under Sargsyan, Armenia barely recovered from a GDP decline of 14 percent in 2009, only to witness a 7.5-percent surge of economic growth in 2017.

By the end of last year, however, the economy faced deflation and extremely weak domestic demand.

The government has grappled with constant budget deficits, and the unemployment rate remains above 16 percent.

This story originated in VOA’s Armenian Service. VOA’s Aram Avetisyan reported from Washington.
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Timeline: Basque Group ETA’s Decades of Violence, Gradual Demise

Posted on 05/01/2018 by SeeEU

Basque separatist group ETA is due to announce its final dissolution this week, ending Western Europe’s last major armed insurgency, a 50-year campaign which killed more than 850 people in Spain.

Here is a timeline of major events since the founding of ETA, whose initials stand for Euskadi ta Askatasuna (Basque Country and Freedom), and its gradual weakening.

1959 — Students in Madrid form ETA during dictatorship of Francisco Franco, who suppressed Basque culture, to fight for an independent state in northern Spain and southern France.

1968 — ETA carries out first known killing, shooting Melito Manzanas, secret police chief in Basque city of San Sebastian.

1973 — Franco’s prime minister and heir apparent Luis Carrero Blanco is killed when his car drives over explosives planted by ETA in Madrid.

1974 — Explosion at Rolando cafe in Madrid kills 12.

1975 — Spain becomes democracy but ETA continues its violent campaign, altering perceptions of movement as force for resistance against fascism.

1978 — ETA founds political wing Herri Batasuna.

1980 — In its bloodiest year, ETA kills about 100 people.

1983 — Government officials set up illegal death squads known as Anti-Terrorist Liberation Groups (GAL).

1985 — ETA car bomb explodes in Madrid. A U.S. tourist is killed and 16 Civil Guards wounded.

1986 — Twelve Civil Guards are killed and 50 wounded in Madrid in July. Juan Manuel Soares is later sentenced to 1,401 years in jail for killings.

1987 — Twenty-one shoppers are killed by bomb at Barcelona supermarket in June. ETA apologises. Car bomb outside barracks in Zaragoza kills 11.

1991 — Ten people killed by car bomb outside Civil Guard barracks in Barcelona.

1995 — ETA members attempt to kill Jose Maria Aznar, leader of right-wing Popular Party, with car bomb. He survives and becomes prime minister in March 1996.

1995 — Attempt to assassinate King Juan Carlos in Mallorca.

1997— Police foil plot to assassinate King Juan Carlos at Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. One officer dies in shootout, ETA member Eneko Gogeaskoetxea escapes.

1997 — ETA kidnaps and kills Basque Popular Party member and Ermua town councillor Miguel Angel Blanco. Outrage spreads through Spain and 6 million take to streets.

1998 — ETA announces truce which ends in Dec. 1999.

1998 — Former Interior Minister Jose Barrionuevo, his deputy Rafael Vera and a former civil governor, Julian Sancristobal, are jailed for their role in GAL actions. The three were granted a partial pardon and released later that year.

1999 — ETA meets Spanish government in Switzerland. In November, it announces ceasefire for Dec. 3.

2000 — Car bombs in Madrid mark return to violent campaign.

2003 — Supreme Court outlaws Batasuna party, which denies links to ETA but refuses to condemn attacks.

2003 — Two bombs in resort towns of Alicante and Benidorm injure more than 10 people. Santander airport is also bombed.

2004 — Suspected leader Mikel Albisu Iriarte, alias “Mikel Antza” is arrested in France. Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero appeals to ETA to give up fight.

2005 — Parliament lower house approves resolution authorising government to negotiate disarmament.

2006 — ETA declares permanent ceasefire in March. Zapatero tells parliament he will seek peace talks. In December, car bomb explodes at Madrid airport killing two Ecuadorians. Zapatero breaks off peace process.

2007 — Zapatero rejects an offer from Arnaldo Otegi, leader of Batasuna, to restart peace talks without demanding major concessions from Spain. In April, ETA says it is willing to compromise if Spain stops arresting militants in Basque Country.

2007 — ETA announces end to ceasefire in June. In December, two undercover Guardia Civil officials are killed in France.

2008 — Zapatero rules out any chance of peace talks with ETA and says only option is unilateral surrender. Isaias Carrasco, former Socialist Party councillor, is killed in Mondragon. In November, ETA claims responsibility for 10 bombings and says it will press its campaign for Basque rights.

— Suspected military leader, Garikoitz Aspiazu Rubina, known by his alias “Txeroki” or “Cherokee”, is arrested in France.

— In December, Ignacio Uria, owner of construction company Altuna y Uria which was building high-speed train line, is shot dead in Azpeitia. French police arrest man identified as Balak, presumed successor to Txeroki.

2009 — Jurdan Martitegi, ETA’s new military leader known as “the giant”, is arrested in France in April. Two Civil Guard officers are killed in explosion at barracks in Mallorca, near royal holiday home, in July.

— French police arrest three suspected members in ski resort and raid 13 weapons stashes in southern France in August, dealing heavy blow to the group.

— In November, Batasuna calls for talks between ETA and Spain based on principles used in Northern Ireland’s peace process. Spain rejects overtures the next day.

2010 — Ibon Gogeascoechea, ETA’s latest leader and on run since escaping scene of assassination attempt on King Juan Carlos in 1997, is arrested in Normandy.

— French police officer is shot and killed near Paris after suspected rebels fire on his patrol. French Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy vows to pursue group.

— Suspected military leader Mikel Kabikoitz Karrera Sarobe, known as “Ata”, is arrested in France.

— In September, ETA says it has decided to stop carrying out armed attacks. Spain is sceptical and insists ETA must lay down its arms for good. ETA lays out conditions for end to its violent campaign.

— Batasuna says it will reject violence in its drive to be legalized but government says it must go further to be allowed to participate in elections.

2011 — ETA declares permanent, general and verifiable ceasefire in January. The government rejects it and demands ETA permanently renounce violence and all its activities.

— In October, ETA announces “definitive end” to violence and moves to negotiate with France and Spain, which demand it gives up weapons. ETA makes no mention of possible weapons handover or disbanding.

— ETA says deal with France and Spain would be a condition to end armed fight but Spain says it must disband unconditionally.

2015 — Egoitz Urrutikoetxea arrested in Paris. Incumbent leader Mikel Irastorza arrested in France.

2017 — ETA effectively ends its armed campaign on April 8, surrendering its caches of weapons, explosives and ammunition to authorities in the French city of Bayonne. Spain’s government says the move is positive but insufficient, and calls on the group to formally dissolve and apologise to its victims.

2018 — Leaders ask members to vote on whether to dismantle completely by summer after months of internal debate, the group says in February.

— In April, Basque public television reports ETA plans to announce its full dissolution on the first weekend in May. Later the same month, the group apologises for harm caused to victims and their relatives. Spain welcomes the apology, but says it should have been offered a long time before.
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Assad Ally Seeks Comeback in Lebanese Election

Posted on 05/01/2018 by SeeEA

A friend of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who was once one of Lebanon’s most powerful men is trying to make a comeback, with the backing of

the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement.

Jamil al-Sayyed rose to become Lebanon’s feared intelligence chief during Syria’s 15-year domination of the country after its 1975-90 civil war. He quit in 2005, weeks after former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri was assassinated, and spent four years in jail until he was released without charge over the killing.

Now 68, the retired general and former spymaster is running on Sunday in Lebanon’s first parliamentary election since 2009.

Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, a Sunni Muslim, is expected to remain in power though he is likely to lose some seats to rivals, including candidates allied to Hezbollah.

But Hariri, who is backed by the West and leads a government that includes Hezbollah and nearly all Lebanon’s other main parties, has signaled his concern by indirectly identifying Sayyed as “Bashar al-Assad’s candidate.”

The Baalbek-Hermel constituency in eastern Lebanon, where Sayyed is running as an independent candidate, has become one of the most important battlegrounds in the election.

Sayyed says Hezbollah’s opponents have chosen it “as a point of confrontation.”

“I am an independent but not neutral,” Sayyed told Reuters in an interview in his home village of Nabi Ayla in the fertile Bekaa Valley.

Making clear his allegiance is with Hezbollah, he said: “I have firm political convictions in support of the resistance.”

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has said he will go to the district if necessary to support Hezbollah and its allies against Hariri’s Future Movement and the Lebanese Forces party led by Samir Geagea, a former Christian militia leader.

Sayyed’s critics say his potential comeback and that of his wartime opponents from the anti-Syria camp, such as Geagea, could entrench old divisions. One of the biggest anti-Syria dissidents of that time, Christian politician Michel Aoun, is now president of the country of 4 million.

But Sayyed said he was unfazed that Lebanon is mostly run by leaders from the civil war era.

“I know their secrets and what they hide — their history — because I worked as required in the state in security, in politics,” he said.

Criticism of Washington

Sayyed criticized U.S. financial support for the Lebanese army, saying it was intended to provoke a confrontation with Hezbollah, which Washington considers a terrorist organization.

But he said the Lebanese army and Hezbollah continue to operate in such a way as to complement each other. Hezbollah remained “a necessity [for the army] all the while the West and America do not supply the army with necessary deterrent capabilities,” he said.

Sayyed’s candidacy in the election has revived memories of a turbulent period that ushered in a sometimes violent power struggle between allies and opponents of Damascus.

If he makes it into parliament, he could become a candidate to one day succeed Nabih Berri as the assembly’s speaker — a post reserved for a Shiite in Lebanon’s sectarian power-sharing system.

At the peak of his influence, Sayyed inspired fear among opponents of Syrian influence in Lebanon. A career soldier, he was central to what critics saw as a Syria-controlled security order that suppressed voices opposed to Syrian dominance.

Sayyed shaped the politics of that era alongside top Syrian officials and Lebanese leaders, many of them militia leaders from the 1975-90 conflict.

At the time of Rafik Hariri’s killing, Sayyed was head of the General Security Directorate intelligence agency. He was the most powerful of four Lebanese generals detained in 2005 at the request of Detlev Mehlis, the German prosecutor who headed the early stages of the U.N. investigation into the

assassination and implicated Syrian and Lebanese figures.

A U.N.-backed tribunal ordered their release in 2009 for lack of evidence and has charged five members of Hezbollah over the assassination. Hezbollah denies any role in the killing.
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Algerian Union Urges Bouteflika to Seek Fifth Term

Posted on 05/01/2018 by SeeAF

Algeria’s biggest union urged President Abdelaziz Bouteflika on Tuesday to seek a fifth term in office, a further sign that the veteran leader will run in next year’s elections in the North African oil producer.

“I will deliver the request for a fifth term to Bouteflika’s interior minister so he can hand it to him,” Sidi Said, secretary-general of the Union Generale des Travailleurs Algériens (UGTA), told a gathering of more than 2,000 workers.

The union has backed Bouteflika, 81, since he took office in 1999. His fourth term will end by the first half of 2019 when elections are expected.

The Algerian leader is rarely seen in public following a stroke in 2013 and he is wheelchair-bound. Though he has not declared his intention yet of running, speculation is mounting that he will seek a fifth term after he made a rare public appearance last month in the capital, Algiers.

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At Least 15 Dead After Church Attack in Central African Republic

Posted on 05/01/2018 by SeeAF

At least 15 people including a priest were killed and scores wounded in Central African Republic’s capital Bangui on Tuesday when unidentified gunmen attacked a church, a morgue official and rights groups said.

The attack occurred on the border of the predominantly Muslim PK 5 neighborhood where 21 people were killed last month when a joint mission by U.N. peacekeepers and local security forces to disarm criminal gangs descended into open fighting.

Witnesses said Notre Dame de Fatima church was attacked with gunfire and grenades during a morning service, forcing trapped churchgoers to escape through a hole made in the church wall by police.

“Filled with panic, some Christians began to flee until bullets and grenades began to fall in the parish grounds, trapping those who remained in the compound,” Moses Aliou, a priest at the church, told Reuters.

Nine dead bodies were taken to Bangui’s Community Hospital, a morgue official said, while aid agency Doctors Without Borders said six people had died and 60 were wounded at other hospitals where it operates.

It is not clear if they were all killed in the church attack itself or during skirmishes that occurred afterwards in the surrounding area.

A priest named Albert Toungoumale Baba was among those shot dead during the attack, said the Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Bangui, Walter Brad Mazangue.

A crowd of thousands of angry, shouting protesters gathered as his body, covered by a sheet, was carried on a makeshift stretcher along dirt streets to the presidential palace, a Reuters witness said.

Although the gunmen were not identified, Central African Republic has seen frequent incidences of inter-faith violence since 2013 when mainly Muslim Seleka rebels ousted President Francois Bozize.

Retaliation killings followed by “anti-balaka” armed groups, drawn largely from Christian communities, and Muslim “self-defence” groups sprang up in PK5, claiming to protect the Muslim civilians concentrated there against efforts to drive them out.

The same church was previously attacked in 2014, when gunmen with grenades killed a priest and some worshippers.

After last month’s deaths in PK5, demonstrators who blamed U.N. soldiers for firing on residents protesting against the operation to counter armed groups carried the bodies of the dead to the gates of the U.N. mission, known as MINUSCA.

MINUSCA and the police were not immediately available for comment on Tuesday.
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Schools Under Attack in Northwest Cameroon

Posted on 05/01/2018 by SeeAF

Fresh violence in northwestern Cameroon has forced hundreds of teachers and students from their classrooms. Separatist rebels are targeting schools for not observing calls to strike.

Heavy rains fall as we arrive at Saint Bedes school in the English-speaking town of Ashing.

Dozens of students are carrying boxes out of the school. 17-year-old student Ambe John is leaving.

“I am going home due to what happened in school and for the sake of my principal. I need to go home so he can be rescued,” said Ambe John.

Armed men attacked the school on Monday, abducting the principal and the school chaplain. Government officials told VOA for the two men were targeted by anglophone separatists for violating instructions to remain closed in support of the Ambazonian independence movement.

The chaplain was later released but the principal has not been found.

Godlove Nformi left his home in the nearby French-speaking town of Bafoussam to pick up his son when he got news of the attack.

“The matron gave us the information that we should come and take our children home,” he said. “I am feeling too bad because I think that with everything children should have been going to school at least to see that their future is guaranteed.”

Schools in Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions — the northwest and the southwest — were shuttered for nearly a year starting in November 2016. Teachers and lawyers were on strike demanding reforms to address what they say is the marginalization of Anglophones in mostly French-speaking country.

Some schools reopened last October, but the crisis has intensified. Late in November, President Paul Biya declared a state of war in the Anglophone regions.

The government says at least 30 schools have been attacked this year, with at least a dozen teachers either killed or wounded in the northwest and southwest regions. Hundreds more have fled.

Johnson Itoh, the most senior education official in the northwest region, says they have been pleading with the teachers to return since the government has deployed the military to protect them.

“We are having personnel of secondary education especially school heads shot at in the northwest here. The going is tough, the tough must get going. So what we are trying to do is to raise up the morale of those in the field,” said Itoh.

Adolph Deben Tchoffo, governor of the northwest region of Cameroon, has been visiting the villages to encourage parents to send children to school.

The governor says he has come on behalf of President Biya to call on the population to seal a pact of collaboration with the military and administrative authorities so that the rebels, which the government has deemed terrorists, can be defeated. He says all village heads and traditional rulers should create self-defense groups to ward off infiltration.

Since early 2017, the government has responded forcefully to the unrest in the Anglophone regions. Rights group say the crackdown, which has included the detention of hundreds of people and at one point a three-month internet blackout, inflamed tensions, making dialogue more difficult.

The conflict has killed dozens on both sides this year and displaced at least 20,000 people.
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McCain Assails Trump in New Book

Posted on 05/01/2018 by SeeUS

U.S. Senator John McCain, in a farewell memoir as he battles brain cancer, lashes out at President Donald Trump as failing to uphold American values.

“He has declined to distinguish the actions of our government from the crimes of despotic ones,” the 81-year-old McCain said of Trump in an excerpt from his new book, The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations.

“The appearance of toughness, or a reality show facsimile of toughness, seems to matter more than any of our values,” McCain wrote.

McCain, a one-time prisoner of war in North Vietnam in the 1960s, the losing Republican candidate for the presidency in 2008 and six times elected as a senator from Arizona, says he has no regrets as he serves what his illness has forced him to admit, that it is his last term in the Senate.

“‘The world is a fine place and worth fighting for and I hate very much to leave it,’ spoke my hero, Robert Jordan, in For Whom the Bell Tolls,” McCain says in his book.

“And I do, too,” he continued “I hate to leave it. But I don’t have a complaint. Not one.I t’s been quite a ride. I’ve known great passions, seen amazing wonders, fought in a war, and helped make a peace.I made a small place for myself in the story of America and the history of my times.”

He wrote, “I’m freer than colleagues who will face the voters again. I can speak my mind without fearing the consequences much. And I can vote my conscience without worry.”

“I don’t think I’m free to disregard my constituents’ wishes, far from it,” he said.” I don’t feel excused from keeping pledges I made. Nor do I wish to harm my party’s prospects. But I do feel a pressing responsibility to give Americans my best judgment.”

He decried the “decline in civility and cooperation, and increased obstructionism” he has witnessed in Congress and politically fractious Washington. He said there are government officials and lawmakers who are “committed to meeting the challenges of the hour. They might not be the most colorful politicians in town, but they’re usually the ones who get the most done.”

“Before I leave I’d like to see our politics begin to return to the purposes and practices that distinguish our history from the history of other nations,” he wrote. “I would like to see us recover our sense that we are more alike than different.”

“We are citizens of a republic made of shared ideals forged in a new world to replace the tribal enmities that tormented the old one,” McCain said. “Even in times of political turmoil such as these, we share that awesome heritage and the responsibility to embrace it.”

The outspoken McCain has had a contentious relationship with the Republican Trump. During Trump’s long run to the presidency, he belittled McCain’s 5 1/2 years in captivity in North Vietnam after the naval fighter pilot was shot down in a bombing run over Hanoi.

“He’s not a war hero,” Trump said. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

Last year, McCain defied Trump and cast the deciding vote against the Republican plan supported by the president to repeal national health care policies that had been championed by Trump’s Democratic predecessor, former President Barack Obama.

Since December, McCain has undergone treatment in Arizona, occasionally offering his commentary on national and international issues, but staying away from Washington.
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More Than 20 Killed in Northeastern Nigeria Bombing

Posted on 05/01/2018 by SeeAF

More than 20 people were killed Tuesday when suicide bombers set off explosives outside a mosque in the northeastern Nigerian town of Mubi.

There was no claim of responsibility, but the attack bore the hallmarks of Islamist radical group Boko Haram.

Dozens of others reportedly were injured in the midday explosions. Witnesses say one bomber detonated his explosives at the mosque, while the other struck a few minutes later in a crowd of worshipers who had fled to a nearby market.
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Morocco Severs Ties with Iran, Accusing it of Backing Polisario Front

Posted on 05/01/2018 by SeeAF

Morocco will sever diplomatic ties with Iran over Tehran’s support for the Polisario Front, a Western Sahara independence movement, the Moroccan foreign minister said on Tuesday.

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

Morocco will close its embassy in Tehran and will expel the Iranian ambassador in Rabat, Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita told reporters.

He said that Iran and its Lebanese Shi’ite ally, Hezbollah, were supporting Polisario by training and arming its fighters, via the Iranian embassy in Algeria.

“Hezbollah sent military officials to Polisario and provided the front with … weapons and trained them on urban warfare,” Bourita said.

Algeria, Morocco’s neighbor, hosts camps of displaced from the conflict region and Polisario members. It was not immediately possible to get Iranian reaction to the Moroccan accusation. Iran has backed Polisario in the past.

The Western Sahara region has effectively been split by an earthen wall separating an area controlled by Morocco that it claims as its southern provinces and territory controlled by the Polisario, with a U.N.-mandated buffer zone between them.

In 2009, Morocco cut diplomatic links with Iran, accusing it of questioning Sunni rule of Bahrain, a Gulf Arab island that has a Shi’ite majority. Ties were gradually restored around 2014, but they were never strong, with Rabat backing Tehran’s arch-rival, Saudi Arabia.

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Two Top Aides Leave EPA Amid Ethics Investigations

Posted on 05/01/2018 by SeeUS

Two top aides have resigned from the Environmental Protection Agency amid a growing series of federal ethics investigations, EPA chief Scott Pruitt announced Tuesday.

In statements, Pruitt gave no immediate reasons why the men — security chief Pasquale “Nino” Perrotta and Superfund manager Albert Kelly — were leaving.

EPA spokespeople Jahan Wilcox and Liz Bowman did not immediately respond to questions about whether the departures were related to ongoing federal investigations.

Pruitt’s spending on security, and some of the security contracts with Perrotta, are among the subjects of more than a dozen federal probes involving the EPA under Pruitt, a former Oklahoma attorney general.

Pruitt said Perrotta was retiring, and praised what he described as Perrotta’s hard work and dedication.

Pruitt thanked Kelly for what he said was his “tremendous impact” in Kelly’s year overseeing the nation’s Superfund program, charged with handling the cleanup of toxic waste sites.

Pruitt hired Kelly, an Oklahoma banker, at EPA after federal banking regulators banned the man from banking for life over unspecified lending matters.

Democrats in Congress last month asked for federal investigations of Kelly’s reported loans to Pruitt himself while the two were still in Oklahoma.

Last week, Pruitt weathered six hours of grilling from congressional Democrats over the steady flow of news reports and announcements of new investigations involving alleged ethical lapses at his agency, including spending for round-the-clock security guards, first-class plane tickets and a $43,000 soundproof telephone booth.

Pruitt repeatedly deflected blame, saying subordinates had taken the questioned actions without his knowledge.

Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., who has pushed for investigations of ethical problems under Pruitt, said in a statement Tuesday that “Pruitt should be the next to go.”

“Albert Kelly was never qualified to run Superfund, his banking ban was a huge red flag and his resignation is a positive development,” Beyer said.
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Trump Assails Russia Probe as Investigators’ Questions Leaked

Posted on 05/01/2018 by SeeUS

U.S. President Donald Trump fired new broadsides Tuesday at the criminal investigation into his 2016 election campaign’s links to Russia and his White House actions.

The U.S. leader derided special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, said it was “disgraceful” that more than four dozen questions investigators want to ask Trump were leaked in a The New York Times story and contended that it would be “very hard” to obstruct the probe if, as he says, there was no collusion with Russia to help him win the election.

The Times report said Mueller’s team wants to probe Trump’s thinking about issues that occurred during the campaign, in the nearly three months between the election and his assuming power in January 2017 and during his 15 months in office.

The questions include ones about Trump’s motivation behind some of his most incendiary comments on Twitter, where he often attacks the investigation and political opponents, but most more broadly focus on allegations Trump has obstructed justice by trying to thwart Mueller’s probe.

Firing of James Comey

The investigators want to explore Trump’s thinking in firing former FBI director James Comey a year ago while he was leading the Russia probe. Mueller’s team also has questions about Comey’s claim that Trump asked him to end his probe of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, whom Trump had also ousted and has since pleaded guilty to lying to Mueller’s investigators about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to Washington.

The questions show that Mueller also wants to know when Trump knew about a middle-of-the-campaign meeting at his Trump Tower headquarters in New York arranged by his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., with a Russian lawyer on the pretense that she would offer the campaign incriminating material on Trump’s opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton. The younger Trump says the attorney had no such political dirt on Clinton. But news accounts charge when news of the meeting surfaced months later, President Trump played a role in writing a misleading characterization of the June 2016 meeting.

Business affairs

In addition, Mueller has questions about Trump’s business affairs, especially possible deals linked to Russia, and what happened on Trump’s 2013 trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant he owned at the time. A former British intelligence official, Christopher Steele, compiled a dossier on the trip, with uncorroborated, anonymous allegations Trump cavorted with prostitutes in a hotel room, which Trump has denied.

Whether Mueller and his team will actually get to ask Trump any questions is an open question. The president at various times has said he wants to answer Mueller’s inquiries, but some of his defense lawyers have advised against it, fearing that Trump, who is often prone to exaggerations or outright falsehoods, could get trapped by the questioning.

Trump’s attorneys have discussed the possibility of an interview with the prosecutors, but no agreement has been reached.

In one of his Tuesday tweets, Trump said, “So disgraceful that the questions concerning the Russian Witch Hunt were “leaked” to the media. No questions on Collusion. Oh, I see… you have a made up, phony crime, Collusion, that never existed, and an investigation begun with illegally leaked classified information. Nice!”

Later, he contended, “It would seem very hard to obstruct justice for a crime that never happened! Witch Hunt!”

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IAEA: ‘No Credible Indications’ of Iran Nuclear Weapons Activity after 2009

Posted on 05/01/2018 by SeeUS

The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog called attention Tuesday to a 2015 report by its director that said it had “no credible indications” of Iranian activity linked to the development of nuclear weapons after 2009.

The report presented by International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano ended a more than decade-long investigation into allegations Iran worked to develop nuclear arms, which Iran repeatedly denied.

Closing the probe was part of the agreement Iran reached with the United States, Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany to limit its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

Amano concluded Iran carried out activities related to developing a “nuclear explosive device,” mostly before 2003. But those activities did not get beyond scientific studies and acquiring “certain relevant technical competencies and capabilities.”

The IAEA statement comes a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented materials he said showed evidence Iran covered up nuclear arms work.

The White House praised the information as “new and compelling,” though officials in Washington have stopped short of charging Tehran with outright violations of its 2015 deal with world powers.

U.S. officials reviewing the cache of documents, charts, blueprints, photos and videos recovered by Israeli intelligence said late Monday that the materials they had seen were authentic and consistent with information amassed by the U.S. over many years.

“This information provides new and compelling details about Iran’s efforts to develop missile-deliverable nuclear weapons,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

Netanyahu first leveled the new accusations Monday during a televised news conference, saying the cache of documents and other files show Iran was “brazenly lying” about its nuclear weapons program.

The initial response to Netanyahu’s allegations was lukewarm. Intelligence experts and diplomats said much of the evidence the Israeli leader presented during his news conference dated to before Iran signed the 2015 nuclear deal.

Iran, too, downplayed the intelligence, with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif taking to Twitter to deride the Israeli claims.

“The boy who can’t stop crying wolf is at it again,” Zarif tweeted before Netanyahu spoke. “You can only fool some of the people so many times.”

France’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday the information presented by Israel reinforces the need to keep the nuclear deal in place.

But U.S. officials say while much of the intelligence is consistent with what has long been known, some of it sheds new light on Tehran’s activities.

Specifically, officials said the Israeli intelligence provided new details on Iran’s effort to develop its Shahab-3 ballistic missile into one capable of delivering a nuclear warhead.

“I think this makes very clear that at the very least the Iranians have continued to lie to their own people,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters late Monday. “The Iranians have consistently taken the position that they’ve never had a program like this.”

“It is time to revisit the question of whether Iran can be trusted to enrich or control any nuclear material,” Pompeo said.

The new round of allegations against Iran comes at a critical time. The Trump administration has given U.S. allies a May 12 deadline to fix what it sees as the flaws with the 2015 nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. If that does not happen, Trump has threatened to pull the U.S. out of the deal and reimpose economic sanctions on Tehran.

U.S. President Donald Trump was likewise vague when he spoke earlier Monday during a White House news conference with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari.

“If anything is proven right what Israel has done today with the news conference… that is just not an acceptable situation,” Trump said.

But he quickly added, “if anything, what’s happening today and what’s happened over the last little while, and what we’ve learned, has really shown that I’ve been 100 percent right.”

“They’re not sitting back idly. They’re setting off missiles which they say are for television purposes,” Trump said. “I don’t think so.”

As recently as last month, top U.S. military commanders, including the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, told U.S. lawmakers that Tehran is in compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal.

At the Pentagon Monday, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis refused to go into details when asked whether the U.S. believes Iran was in violation. But Mattis also reaffirmed comments he made to lawmakers last week that the deal was robust enough to deal with any potential violations.

National Security correspondent Jeff Seldin, White House correspondent Steve Herman and State Department correspondent Nike Ching contributed to this report.
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Outside US Port of Entry, Asylum-Seekers Prepare to Make Their Case

Posted on 05/01/2018 by SeeUS

After more than a month of travel by foot, bus and train, the Central American caravan of more than 150 people has stalled at Tijuana’s U.S.-Mexico port of entry, where many are hoping to receive asylum — a U.S. safeguard against deportation for individuals believed to have a “credible fear” of persecution.

Upon the group’s arrival, immigration officials said the port of entry, which has capacity to process roughly 300 people, was already full.

WATCH: US Mexico border

Late Monday, the first of the migrants were allowed to enter the United States for processing, a group organizers said included eight people.

Nicole Ramos, an immigration lawyer with the nonprofit organization “Al Otro Lado,” is among those faulting U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for delays.

“They knew the caravan was coming, so the lack of preparation is not the refugees’ fault,” Ramos said. “How is it that the American government, which is the most powerful country in the world and one of the richest, doesn’t have the capacity to process 200 refugees — kids?”

Awaiting their turn, many migrants camped overnight with their belongings and loved ones. A mix of hope and anxiety was palpable outside the gate.

“I’m happy for the opportunity, and doubtful because of what could happen,” one Honduran told VOA.

“A part of me is sad, but I’m happy to see so many friends here,” said Adán Alberto Ramírez, an 18-year-old father from El Salvador.

The right of asylum

“We’ve been watching it. We’ve been watching it,” President Donald Trump said in reference to the caravan on Monday. He called U.S. immigration laws “weak and obsolete.”

In addition to calling for Congress to act, Trump criticized a policy known as “catch and release,” which allows migrants to be released from prolonged detention while their asylum cases are pending.

“If they touch our property, if they touch our country, essentially you catch them and you release them into our country. That’s not acceptable to anybody,” Trump said. “We need a change in the law.”

Asylum-seekers who enter through ports of entry are abiding by the current law. CBP emphasizes the importance of entering this way, and not elsewhere.

“If they come to the ports of entry, they identify themselves correctly and state their claim, and do it officially, absolutely,” said CBP Public Affairs Specialist Meredith Mingledorff. “What we ask is that you don’t go around the ports of entry and try to come into the country illegally between them.”

“We understand that they have a dream, they have a need,” added Jorge Rivera, a U.S. Border Patrol supervisor with California’s El Centro Sector.

“There are laws in this country. We need to abide by them. We expect everybody that’s coming to our country to abide by those laws, and we’re here to enforce them.”

Deportation, a death sentence

Stymied in their attempt to apply for asylum, the migrants were facing another chilly night in the open air Monday. The temperature in Tijuana was forecast to drop to 11 degrees Celsius, and Tuesday was expected to be rainy.

Roughly half of the caravan are minors accompanied by their parents. And not all think they will be granted asylum. Upon learning their rights and chances of entry, some families have opted to stay in Mexico rather than face the risk of deportation, which they view as a death sentence.

Honduran native Luis Pavon is one. While he traveled with his girlfriend and baby daughter to the U.S.-Mexico border, he will stay on the Mexico side while his family presses on. He said he lost his father and brother to gang violence, but he feels his daughter and partner’s chances of receiving asylum are greater than his own.

“Donald Trump wants to separate families, and in my case, I am going to be separated from my family,” Pavon said. “In Honduras, [others] are already dead. I wouldn’t be able to see my daughter again. But at least here, on this side of the border, I have the possibility of one day seeing her again.”
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US Backs Israeli Claims on ‘New and Compelling’ Evidence Against Iran

Posted on 05/01/2018 by SeeEA

The White House is praising new intelligence from Israel on Iran’s nuclear weapons program, calling it “new and compelling” though officials in Washington have stopped short of charging Tehran with outright violations of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

“This information provides new and compelling details about Iran’s efforts to develop missile-deliverable nuclear weapons,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

“Iran has a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program that it has tried and failed to hide from the world and from its own people,” she added. “The Iranian regime has shown it will use destructive weapons against its neighbors and others. Iran must never have nuclear weapons.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu first leveled the new accusations Monday during a televised news conference, saying the cache of documents and other files show Iran was “brazenly lying” about its nuclear weapons program.

Iran, too, downplayed the intelligence, with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif taking to Twitter to deride the Israeli claims.

“The boy who can’t stop crying wolf is at it again,” Zarid tweeted before Netanyahu spoke. “You can only fool some of the people so many times.”

But U.S. officials say while much of the intelligence is consistent with what has long been known, some of it sheds new light on Tehran’s activities.

Specifically, officials said the Israeli intelligence provided new details on Iran’s effort to develop its Shahab-3 ballistic missile into one capable of delivering a nuclear warhead.

In a statement, the secretary of state was even more blunt.

“It is time to revisit the question of whether Iran can be trusted to enrich or control any nuclear material,” Pompeo said.

Still, top U.S. officials have so far stopped short of accusing Iran of actually violating the landmark nuclear deal.

“I’ll leave that to lawyers,” Pompeo said when asked if Tehran had in fact cheated on its commitments.

U.S. President Donald Trump was likewise vague when he spoke earlier during a White House news conference with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari.

“If anything is proven right what Israel has done today with the news conference…that is just not an acceptable situation,” Trump said.

But he quickly added, “if anything, what’s happening today and what’s happened over the last little while, and what we’ve learned, has really shown that I’ve been 100 percent right.”

“They’re not sitting back idly. They’re setting off missiles which they say are for television purposes,” Trump said. “I don’t think so.”

As recently as last month, top U.S. military commanders, including the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, told U.S. lawmakers that Tehran is in compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal.

At the Pentagon Monday, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis refused to go into details when asked whether the U.S. believes Iran was in violation.

“I’m giving my advice, as you know, in the ongoing decision process that the president will come to closure on soon, so I’d rather not go into details,” Mattis told reporters. “I will say there are parts of the JCPOA that certainly need to be fixed.”

But Mattis also reaffirmed comments he made to lawmakers last week that the deal was robust enough to deal with any potential violations.

VOA’s Steve Herman, Nike Ching and Ken Bredemeier contributed to this report.
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Mattis Plays Down Odds of Syria Pullout Before Peace Agreement

Posted on 05/01/2018 by SeeEA

The United States and its allies would not want to pull troops out of Syria before diplomats win the peace, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Monday, one of the strongest signs yet a full U.S. withdrawal was unlikely anytime soon.

U.S. President Donald Trump said last week he wants to withdraw American troops from Syria relatively soon, but appeared to temper that position by voicing a desire to leave a “strong and lasting footprint.”

A footprint, in military-speak, usually refers to a U.S. troop presence.

Mattis said the United States and its allies were on the cusp of victory against Islamic State and added they would not want to simply abandon Syria while it remained in a state of war.

“We do not want to simply pull out before the diplomats have won the peace. You win the fight — and then you win the peace,” Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon.

Mattis said he was due to meet later on Monday with U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura to “see where the Geneva process is and what we can do to assist.”

Efforts are stuck to forge a negotiated end to Syria’s civil war, which has killed half a million people over seven years and displaced millions.

The Pentagon and State Department have also held that a longer term U.S. effort will be needed to ensure a lasting defeat of Islamic State. The group seized large swathes of Syria and Iraq but has gradually lost its territory since the United States and its allies started a military offensive in 2014.

Some of the harshest critics of a potential withdrawal from Syria come from Trump’s own Republican party, which blasted President Barack Obama when he withdrew U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011. Iraqi forces began to unravel and eventually collapsed in the face of Islamic State’s advance into the country in 2014.
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New Dawn or Swan Song? Czech Communists Eye Slice of Power After Decades

Posted on 05/01/2018 by SeeEU

When the United States, Britain and France bombed Syria earlier this month, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis showed support for his Western partners one day before rowing back the next.

The military strike turned from “inevitable” to an act described as changing nothing after Babis was rebuked by the far-left Communist party, showing the fine line the billionaire businessman is walking as he tries to form a government.

Babis is aiming for a pro-Western administration but political fragmentation in October’s election means he needs the pro-Russian Communist party to either support it or abstain, ending the party’s pariah status since communism fell in 1989.

The Communists and President Milos Zeman will push Babis — whose ANO party is pro-EU and pro-NATO — toward a softer tone on Moscow, but he is not expected to move far despite the fall of his first minority cabinet in a confidence vote in January.

Shunned by most parties over charges of fraud in a 2-million-euro EU subsidy case he says is a plot, Babis is now negotiating a coalition with the center-left Social Democrats that would also lean on Communist votes.

The Communists’ limited role, with no cabinet seats, would not bring the kind of changes to core policies that have sparked conflict between the EU and Hungary and Poland, but would still anger many Czechs who suffered under their rule.

The current Communist rank and file, with average age well over 70, are nostalgic about life behind the Iron Curtain, and the party pledges to fight global capitalism and leave NATO.

“Security threats do not come from the east, security is under threat from those who commit aggressive attacks against sovereign countries in violation of international law as the United States, Britain and France have done in Syria,” party leader Vojtech Filip said at a party congress on April 21.

Foreign Policy

The Communists would like to end EU sanctions on Russia and follow Moscow’s line on Ukraine: party officials have traveled to separatist-controlled Donbass and Crimea.

They oppose Czech participation in military missions lacking U.N. approval — which means any opposed by Russia as permanent U.N. Security Council member.

The Czechs have hundreds of troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, a number Babis’s cabinet aims to boost this year by several hundred. The Czechs also plan to help protect NATO airspace in the Baltic.

“We have an elevated sensitivity to any pressure for escalation of tensions toward the post-Soviet region, we would have to react very strongly to anything like that,” Communist member of parliament Richard Dolejs told Reuters.

The Communists also criticized Babis’s government for handing a suspected Russian hacker in March to the United States, and for expelling Russian diplomats after the attack on a former Russian spy in Britain.

Falling Support

It is unclear what concessions the Communists would secure from the two coalition parties, but their influence will be limited by their waning popularity. They scored their worst post-Communist election result, 7.8 percent, in October, bleeding half of their votes to the far-right and to Babis.

“They have become very pragmatic over the last two decades,” said Lubomir Kopecek, political science professor at the Masaryk University.

“The request to leave NATO does not appear in the talks…A large part of the party’s elite wants to experience some recognition at the end of their political careers.”

A senior source from one of the negotiating parties said the Communists would be satisfied with positions in administration and state-owned firms. In foreign policy, the government could seek support elsewhere in parliament.

Dolejs said the party wanted to have a say on issues such as social benefits.

“Tolerating the government will raise our legitimacy. We see a chance to show our voters…that we can get at least a bird in the hand.”

More Trouble Elsewhere?

Involving the Communists is not a sudden turnaround. They have been part of regional governments and former party members, who include Babis himself, have held prominent jobs.

For the center-right, the party remains a no-go. “Andrej Babis is fulfilling his dream at too high a cost,” Petr Fiala, leader of the Civic Democrats, said in a post last week.

But elsewhere views are finely balanced. A Median agency survey last month showed 45 percent of Czechs could accept a Communist-backed government, while another 41 percent reject it.

Thousands protested in March after Zdenek Ondracek, a Communist lawmaker who had been in a police unit that beat up pro-democracy protesters in the 1980s, was elected to lead a police inspection oversight body. Babis withdrew his support and Ondracek resigned.

Within the Social Democrats, there is more debate about the risks of joining Babis, due to his legal problems and visions of streamlining political decision-making, than the Communists.

And Social Democrat leader Jan Hamacek said on Saturday he was more worried about the rising far-right, anti-Islam, anti-NATO and anti-EU party SPD, which won 10.6 percent of the vote.
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Russia’s Gazprom: Sea Portion of TurkStream First Line Completed

Posted on 05/01/2018 by SeeEU

Russia’s Gazprom said on Monday it had completed the sea portion of the first line of the TurkStream offshore gas pipeline across the Black Sea.

Gazprom, which plans to complete the pipeline in 2019, said in a statement that 1,161 km, of pipe had been laid since it began construction last year.

The second line, designed to ship gas to south European countries such as Greece, Bulgaria and Italy, will be laid in the third quarter of 2018, the company said.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said this month that Turkey’s approval for Gazprom’s onshore portion of the TurkStream pipeline’s second line was still pending.

Moscow, which relies on oil and gas revenue, sees new pipelines to Turkey and Germany – TurkStream and Nord Stream 2 – as crucial to increasing its market share in Europe.

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America’s Air Isn’t Getting Cleaner as Fast as It Used To

Posted on 05/01/2018 by SeeUS

For decades America’s air was getting cleaner as levels of a key smog ingredient steadily dropped. That changed about seven years ago when pollution reductions leveled off, a new study found.

This means when tighter federal air quality standards go into effect later this year, many more cities may find themselves on the dirty air list.

There are several reasons for the flattening of nitrogen oxide levels including hard-to-reduce industrial and truck pollution, said study co-author Helen Worden, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

The study, in Monday’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used satellite and ground measurements to track nitrogen oxides, a major ingredient in smog. Levels fell 7 percent from 2005 to 2009, but only dropped 1.7 percent from 2011 to 2015.

“We can’t say anymore it’s going down,” Worden said.

The results also show the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s computer models overestimate how clean the air really is, said University of North Carolina’s Jason West, who wasn’t part of the study.

Smog is created when nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds cook in sunlight. Those chemicals come from cars, trucks, power and industrial plants.

In 2015, the EPA proposed new air quality standards limiting smog levels to 70 parts per billion, down from the current 75 parts per billion. Those rules are slated to go into effect this fall, but that has been delayed once already. More than 170 counties in the United States are already exceeding the older clean air standard for smog, according to the EPA.

Worden and colleagues tried to figure out what was happening, ruling out the flow of the smog ingredient from China since levels in that country went down since it tightened its air quality rules.

While the 2008 recession may have played a role in the slowdown, Worden said there were other bigger factors at play.

The biggest and easiest pollution reductions have already been achieved, leaving smaller, more difficult cuts, Worden said.

University of Maryland air scientist Ross Salawitch said exposure to elevated ozone can lead to coughing and difficulty breathing, and make respiratory diseases such as asthma worse.

For Worden, who lived in Los Angeles in the early 2000s when it was smoggier than it is now, she would bicycle to work and check ozone levels daily.

If smog levels were high, “it would really make my lungs burn,” she said.

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Waffle House Shooting Shows Pitfalls in Patchwork of US Gun Laws

Posted on 05/01/2018 by SeeUS

When Travis Reinking’s semi-automatic rifle was confiscated after his attempt to enter the White House last year, he simply moved from Illinois to nearby Tennessee where signs of mental illness are no bar to gun ownership.

How and when Reinking’s father returned the AR-15-style weapon and other firearms to his 29-year-old son, accused of shooting dead four people and wounding four at a Waffle House restaurant in Nashville, Tennessee, remain unclear.

Confusing as well are the myriad of U.S. state gun laws that can make it difficult to stop crimes like Sunday’s mass shooting.

The U.S. federal system leaves it up to states to set most gun laws. Less than half of U.S. states require background checks before private sales, and only a small number require “universal checks” for all purchases, including at gun shows.

Virginia has improved mental health reporting after a 2007 college campus massacre but has no laws requiring firearms to be registered. Alaska, with the highest state rate of gun deaths per capita, does not allow firearms to be registered. Most states let residents carry firearms in public, and all states permit the carrying of concealed weapons in some form.

The assault Sunday is the latest mass killing to stoke a fierce debate that pits gun control proponents against gun rights advocates who defend constitutional rights to own guns.

The debate has sharpened since the Feb. 14 shooting at a Parkland, Florida, high school. That massacre prompted an upsurge of teenage gun control activism, including a nationwide student walkout on April 20, two days before the Nashville shooting.

The discussion has aired demands for national laws that would provide uniformity, including regulations on the transport of guns from state to state, as with the Reinking case.

“We need to have national laws that protect against these over-the-border kinds of transfers,” said Illinois state Representative Kathleen Willis, a Democrat who is sponsoring “red flag” legislation to let family members request the seizure of firearms from relatives facing mental health problems.

Mental illness

The variety of ways that gun laws address mental illness has prompted concern. A study by Mother Jones magazine showed that in 62 mass shootings between 1982 and 2012, 38 of the shooters displayed signs of mental health problems before the killings.

Reinking himself has a troubled past. He believed that pop singer Taylor Swift was stalking him and threatened to kill himself, according to police records.

The National Rifle Association, the country’s most powerful gun-rights lobbying organization, says it supports legislation to ensure records of those judged mentally incompetent or “involuntarily committed to mental institutions” be made available for use in firearms transfer background checks.

“The NRA will support any reasonable step to fix America’s broken mental health system without intruding on the constitutional rights of Americans,” the group says on its website.

That support stops short of legislation like Willis’ red flag bill with its “insinuation that gun ownership makes you a danger to yourself or others,” the group said last month.

Illinois is unusual in giving law enforcement the right to revoke a gun license and take away guns from persons if their mental health appears to pose a danger. In Tennessee, like most states, police can only seize guns if a person is involuntarily committed to a mental health facility and judged a danger. Even then, the owner can keep their firearms.

In Reinking’s case, Illinois state police revoked his gun license, and his firearms were transferred to his father after U.S. Secret Service agents arrested him last year for being in a restricted area near the White House.

Authorities have not disclosed whether his father gave him back his guns in Illinois, where it would likely be a crime, or in Tennessee, where it would not.

The U.S. Congress has not passed any substantive national gun laws since the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre, due in large part to opposition from gun-rights groups.

Yet some gun-control advocates see steady movement toward uniform gun laws through actions at the state level.

“Our movement is chipping away and convincing lawmakers that they should be voting for public safety,” said Jonas Oransky, deputy legal director of gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety.

For example, after the Waffle House shooting, Tennessee lawmakers drafted legislation to make it illegal to buy or possess a gun if a person had been subject to “suspension, revocation or confiscation” in another state.

For Illinois lawmaker Willis, it is too little too late.

“All the red flags were there. They followed all the gun laws in Illinois,” she said. “Until we have national laws to restrict this, it’s not going to stop.”
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Trump Postpones Steel Tariff Decision for Canada, EU, Mexico

Posted on 05/01/2018 by SeeUS

U.S. President Donald Trump has postponed a decision on imposing steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada, the European Union and Mexico until June 1, and has reached an agreement in principle with Argentina, Australia and Brazil, a source familiar with the decision said on Monday.

The decision came just hours before temporary exemptions were set to expire at 12:01 a.m. (0401 GMT) on Tuesday.

“The administration has reached agreements in principle with Argentina, Australia, and Brazil, details of which will be finalized in the next 30 days. The administration is also extending negotiations with Canada, Mexico, and the European Union for a final 30 days,” the source said.

Trump imposed a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum in March, but granted temporary exemptions to Canada, Mexico, Brazil, the European Union, Australia and Argentina. He also granted a permanent exemption on steel tariffs to South Korea.

Trump administration officials have said that in lieu of tariffs, steel and aluminum exporting countries would have to agree to quotas designed to achieve similar protections for U.S. producers. South Korea’s permanent exemption is in exchange for having agreed to cut its steel exports to the United States by about 30 percent.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Monday that any move by the United States to impose tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum would be a “very bad idea” guaranteed to disrupt trade between the two countries.

Canada is the largest source of steel imports into the United States, with a steel industry that is highly integrated with its southern neighbor.

Trump has invoked a 1962 trade law to erect protections for U.S. steel and aluminum producers on national security grounds, amid a worldwide glut of both metals that is largely blamed on excess production in China.

If the EU is subject to tariffs on the 6.4 billion euros ($7.7 billion) of the metals it exports annually to the United States, it has said it will set its own duties on 2.8 billion euros of U.S. exports of products ranging from makeup to motorcycles.
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Kelly Denies Report He Called Trump an ‘Idiot’

Posted on 05/01/2018 by SeeUS

White House chief of staff John Kelly is denying a report from NBC News that he called U.S. President Donald Trump an “idiot.”

“I spend more time with the president than anyone else, and we have an incredibly candid and strong relationship,” Kelly said Monday in a statement issued by the White House.

“He always knows where I stand, and he and I both know this story is total BS,” he said. “I am committed to the president, his agenda and our country.”

NBC reported Monday that Kelly has on multiple occasions criticized Trump’s knowledge on issues such as immigration and has cast himself as protecting the country from Trump’s impulses. The report added that Trump was growing tired of Kelly’s attitude.

NBC quoted unnamed sources as saying Kelly was known to “make fun” more generally at what the chief of staff saw as the president’s “lack of knowledge about policy and government.”

The chief of staff, who oversaw immigration enforcement as Homeland Security secretary, believed that Trump was prepared to make too many concessions to Democrats because he did not understand the issue.

“He doesn’t even understand what DACA is. He’s an idiot,” Kelly said in one meeting, two officials who said they were present told NBC News. “We’ve got to save him from himself.”

The report, despite Kelly’s denial, is likely to renew questions about Kelly’s future in the White House. The retired Marine Corps general, who was brought on board last summer to instill order and discipline in the West Wing, has been losing clout as Trump has tired of his style.

David Cohen, a political science professor at the University of Akron in Ohio appeared to give credence to the concerns over Kelly’s future in the White House.

“The knives are out for Kelly — many of them. #POTUS soured on Kelly several weeks ago. He won’t survive in job much longer. Probably days, maybe weeks. Kelly is dead man walking,” Cohen tweeted Monday.
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