Month: May 2019

US Military Confirms ‘Recent and Clear’ Iranian Threat

Posted on by SeeEA

VOA’s Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.

PENTAGON / WHITE HOUSE — The U.S. military has “recent and clear indications” of an Iranian threat against American forces in the Middle East, defense officials said Tuesday.

“U.S. Central Command has seen recent and clear indications that Iranian and Iranian proxy forces were making preparations to possibly attack U.S. forces in the region. This includes threats on land and in the maritime,” U.S. Central Command spokesman Navy Capt. William Urban said.

The United States announced Monday it was speeding up the arrival of a naval aircraft carrier strike group to the Arabian Sea and deploying a bomber task force in response to a potential Iranian threat. Urban said Tuesday B-52 bomber jets were deploying to the region “to protect U.S. forces and interests in the region and to deter any aggression.”

The USS Abraham Lincoln is currently operating in the U.S. European Command area of responsibility (AOR) but will expedite its arrival into the Middle East, a defense official told VOA.

“We have continued to see activity that leads us to believe that there’s escalation that may be taking place, and so we’re taking all the appropriate actions, both from a security perspective as well as our ability to make sure the president has a wide range of options in the event that something should actually take place,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters Monday in Finland. 

The concerns expressed by Pompeo and U.S. defense officials contrast with the U.S. Central Command’s assessment just over a month ago.

Despite Iran’s “significant capability” in Syria and the region, Central Command officials said there were no indications Tehran was aiming to set its sights on U.S. forces.

“Iran’s priority is to defeat ISIS, which it sees as an existential threat,” the Defense Department’s Lead Inspector General for Operation Inherent Resolve said, summarizing CENTCOM’s March 26 assessment in a report issued Tuesday. 

 

“They are not displaying the intent to attack U.S. forces,” the report added, warning, “this calculus could change if Iran perceives a U.S. desire to ramp up anti-Iranian activities in a post-ISIS environment.”

‘Threat’ from US

Some former U.S. intelligence and security officials worry, however, that recent rhetoric from the White House combined with its ongoing “maximum pressure” campaign, has done just that.

New America Foundation Fellow Ned Price told VOA an unusual and aggressive Sunday evening statement issued in the name of the U.S. national security adviser John Bolton — in which he warned the U.S. is “fully prepared to respond to any attack” — makes it seem like the U.S. is “intent on driving the Iranians into a corner.”

“The concern with Bolton’s threat — coming in the midst of a series of escalations from the Trump administration — underscores the concern that the administration is trying to goad the Iranians into an unwise and ill-considered reaction,” said Price, a former spokesman for the Obama-era National Security Council.

In addition to the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, the strike group being sent to the Central Command area of operations includes fighter jets, helicopters, destroyers and more than 6,000 sailors when it left its U.S. port in the state of Virginia in early April.

‘Prudent repositioning of assets’

Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, on Twitter, stated Monday that the deployment of a naval carrier strike group and an air force bomber task force to the area “represents a prudent repositioning of assets in response to indications of a credible threat by Iranian regime forces.” 

 

Shanahan added: “We call on the Iranian regime to cease all provocation. We will hold the Iranian regime accountable for any attack on US forces or our interests.” 

The Trump administration has been working to apply what it calls a “maximum pressure campaign” against Iran to try to get the country to change its behavior, including its sponsorship of terror groups and what the White House alleges is a ballistic missile program that threatens the United States.

 

In response to last month’s U.S. designation of the IRGC as a terrorist group, Iran responded by declaring the United States a state sponsor of terrorism and its forces in the Middle East as terror groups.
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Fears Grow Islamic State’s Foreign Fighters Ready to Carry On

Posted on by SeeEA

This is part one of a four-part series.

WASHINGTON — Even as the Islamic State’s caliphate was clinging to life with its last defenders cornered in a small town in northeastern Syria, the terror group managed to shock those who would eventually see it die.

 

Instead of waiting out about 1,000 civilians and 300 or so hard-core IS fighters who had retreated to Baghuz, the U.S.-led coalition watched for weeks in late February and March, as upwards of 30,000 civilians and 5,000 fighters, slowly surrendered.

 

“Very much unanticipated,” a senior U.S. defense official said at the time, describing what he called “the magnitude of humanity” flowing out of the terror group’s final shred of territory.

 

“We continue to be surprised by the numbers,” the official added.

 

But when it comes to the Islamic State terror group, numbers have always been a challenge for the United States and its partners, starting with their first efforts to measure the terror group’s appeal to would-be jihadists from across the globe.

Counting IS foreign fighters

 

And it is that same uncertainty that has some officials and analysts worried that the narrative surrounding the demise of IS foreign fighters – that the majority are dead or in custody – may be wrong.

 

“We still have pretty reasonable numbers still in the region right now that are almost certainly active,” said Seth Jones, director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

 

“It’s hard to know if some have stayed and given up the fight,” said Jones, who has been studying the rise of Salafi-jihadist movements worldwide. “But the fact that they’re still there, just the fact that they’re free, indicates that there’s a reasonable chance they’re still committed to jihadist activity.”

Just this past week, those jihadis got a call to arms when IS issued a new video of reclusive leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi urging followers to seek vengeance for the fall of Baghuz.

“The threat persists,” said U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Stabilization Denise Natali. “ISIS remains a determined enemy as evidenced by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s first appearance in years…exhorting his supporters to keep up the fight despite territorial losses.”

 

U.S. intelligence officials first began raising concerns about jihadists, or so-called foreign fighters, flocking to the growing civil war in Syria in early 2014, estimating there were about 7,500 from some 50 countries.

 

Just a year later, the estimated number of fighters in Syria and Iraq had more than doubled.

And the numbers are growing even now, not from a new influx but as intelligence services the world over continue to learn of more people, young and old, who left their homes to fight under the banner of the black flag.

 

Senior U.S. counterterrorism officials told VOA that at last count, an estimated 45,000 fighters — a jump of 5,000 from the previous estimate — had flooded the battlefields of Syria and Iraq, almost all in the name of IS.

Tracking IS foreign fighters

 

If getting a grip on the number of foreign fighters who joined Islamic State has been challenging, following them once they joined the terror group’s ranks has been even more difficult.

 

To be sure, many have been killed. But at least about 15,000 are thought to have left the caliphate, two-thirds of whom are likely still at large.

According to an August 2018 report by the United Nations, another 10,000 fighters were in Iraqi custody.

 

More recently, U.S. defense officials have said at least 2,000 more are being held by the Syrian Democratic Forces, the predominantly Kurdish force that liberated IS’ last pocket of territory in the Middle Euphrates River Valley.

 

“We anticipate that number will rise as we work with the SDF to verify the national identities of ISIS fighters in SDF custody,” said Pentagon spokesman Commander Sean Robertson, using an acronym for the terror group.

 

Still, thousands more are as of yet unaccounted for, the U.N. report warning that as of mid-2018, increasing numbers were finding refuge in Afghanistan, “bringing with them skills in handling weaponry and improvised explosive devices and knowledge of military tactics.”

 

“Central Asian fighters tend to feel most comfortable relocating among Afghans of Uzbek and Tajik ethnicity,” the United Nations said.

 

Other foreign fighters, perhaps fearing the imminent collapse of the IS caliphate in Syria, may have made their way back to Iraq by exploiting vulnerabilities along the Syria-Iraq border.

 

Some even continued to join the fight.

Coalition officials told the U.S. Defense Department Inspector General this past January, “the actual number is unknown but estimated that it is ‘most likely 50 per month.’”

 

The numbers, and the threat they represent, have resonated to a degree at the highest levels of the U.S. government.

 

“We’re under no illusions that this issue writ-large has gone away,” a senior U.S. administration official said this past December when asked about IS’ staying power in Syria and Iraq.

 

“In terms of the next phase of the mission, it is continuing to remain vigilant about the ongoing threat of ISIS,” the official said, pointing to places like Libya and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, long seen as potential landing spots for surviving foreign fighters.

 

U.S. intelligence officials have also warned that foreign fighters could find refuge with IS branches, or even less formal networks, in more than a dozen other countries, including Turkey, which for years had served as a gateway for foreign fighters looking to enter Syria.

 

With the collapse of the terror group’s territorial control in Iraq and Syria, such concerns are starting to take center stage.

 

“We’re going to remain very vigilant about potential ISIS activities and their related groups,” the senior official said, anticipating this moment. “Across the region and around the world, quite frankly.”

 

This story is the first in a series looking at the threat of IS foreign fighters. Next up, a look at where the IS foreign fighters are going now.

 
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Russia-Backed Assad Forces Pummel Syria’s Idlib

Posted on by SeeEA

Syrian and Russian warplanes have been escalating airstrikes on the last remaining rebel redoubt in northern Syria. The air raids are as much a message to Turkey as to die-hard rebels and jihadists in the province of Idlib, say analysts.

Russia wants Turkey to do more to remove from the province jihadists fighters once affiliated with al-Qaida, they say.

The U.N. is calling for de-escalation in northwestern Syria, with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urging all parties to recommit to a truce covering opposition-held parts of Idlib, western Aleppo and northern Hama. More than 2.7 million people live in the rebel redoubt, many displaced from other parts of the war-wrecked country.

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said at least 27 civilians have been killed and 31 injured since April 29, including women and children.

Turkey, which backs moderate Syrian rebels and has been in alliance with them against the Syrian Kurds, agreed in September to disarm and remove fighters in the hardline Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham faction. That armed group, once formerly affiliated with al-Qaida, has been expanding its control over parts of Idlib.

Activists say 43 combatants and five civilians were killed on Monday alone in the stepped up airstrikes that reportedly have included dropping barrel and incendiary bombs on residential areas. U.N. officials say the use of barrel bombs in the last few days is the worst they’ve seen by the Syrian army in the 15 months since an agreed to cease-fire for Idlib, which shares a 130-kilometer border with Turkey.

Two medical facilities were also reportedly damaged Monday, bringing to 12 the number of medical clinics bombed since April 28. Relief workers say the bombings occurred despite their coordinates having been shared with the warring parties through a U.N. deconfliction mechanism.

Aerial attacks have targeted the city of Jisr al-Shughour and the al-Ghab plain, as well as the towns of al-Latamenah and Maarat al-Numan in the south of Idlib province, rebels say.

A 15-kilometer demilitarized buffer zone was established along the front lines separating the opposition and forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad last September in a deal between the leaders of Russia and Turkey. The move shelved a threatened all-out assault by the Russia-backed Assad government on Syria’s last rebel stronghold.

Under the terms of the deal, all “radical fighters” would withdraw and all opposition factions would remove heavy weaponry from the zone. By the end of 2018, transportation routes between Syria’s port of Latakia with Aleppo and Hama were meant to have been restored.

Rebel leaders say the military objective of the intensified airstrikes appears to be aimed at seizing control of highways M5 and M4. But they are warning also the air blitz may herald the start of a final government offensive on the rebel enclave, much as intense bombing did in 2016 before a successful government assault on Aleppo.

“An offensive will happen sooner rather than later. It’s just difficult to say how soon,” according to Ahmad Rahal, a former rebel commander.

On Monday, government troops and allied Iran-backed militiamen captured a string of opposition-held villages in northern Hama. Rebel factions carried out counter-attacks in neighboring Latakia province and launched some weaponized drone attacks on the Russian airbase at Hmeimim.

Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War say the government forces appear to be setting the conditions for only a limited ground attack mainly focused on the southern Idlib and northern Hama countryside. Armored units have been deployed, according to Syrian government news reports.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said it is unlikely that a full-scale assault on Syria’s Idlib province will be mounted, dismissing it as impractical for now, although he has not ruled it out entirely. The political aim of the intensified airstrikes appears aimed at putting pressure on Turkey to fulfill its side of the demilitarized zone deal.

Whatever the objectives, the human cost is mounting. U.N. agencies such as the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights estimate that tens of thousands are fleeing and relief workers are warning of an “apocalyptic” humanitarian disaster.

OHCHR spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said, “We call on all parties to the conflict to respect the international humanitarian law principles of distinction, precaution and proportionality and to ensure the full protection of civilian objects.”

“This blatant aggression has forced well over 300,000 people out of their homes and did not stop even on the first day of the holy month of Ramadan,” rebel leaders say. In a statement issued Tuesday, the Syrian Coalition, the main umbrella opposition group, said, “The fierce Russian airstrikes and the regime’s heavy artillery shelling are directly targeting residential areas.”

 

 
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Shaka: Extra Time

Posted on by SeeAF

We are live. In Extra Time Shaka answers your questions about politics in Africa.
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Refusal to Hand Over Trump’s Tax Returns Sets Up Legal Fight

Posted on by SeeUS

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has made it official: The administration won’t be turning President Donald Trump’s tax returns over to the Democratic-controlled House.

Mnuchin told Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, Democrat-Massachusetts, in a Monday letter that the panel’s request “lacks a legitimate legislative purpose” as Supreme Court precedent requires.

In making that determination, Mnuchin said he relied on the advice of the Justice Department. He concluded that the Treasury Department is “not authorized to disclose the requested returns and return information.” He said the Justice Department will provide a more detailed legal justification soon.

The move, which was expected, is sure to set in motion a legal battle over Trump’s tax returns. The chief options available to Democrats are to subpoena the IRS for the returns or to file a lawsuit. Last week, Neal promised “we’ll be ready” to act soon after Monday’s deadline.

Treasury’s denial came the day that the House Judiciary panel scheduled a vote for Wednesday on whether to find Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena for a full, unredacted copy of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report. Fights with other House panels are ongoing.

“I will consult with counsel and determine the appropriate response,” Neal said in a statement Monday.

Neal originally demanded access to Trump’s tax returns in early April under a law that says the IRS “shall furnish” the returns of any taxpayer to a handful of top lawmakers, including the chair of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. He maintains that the committee is looking into the effectiveness of IRS mandatory audits of tax returns of all sitting presidents, a way to justify his claim that the panel has a potential legislative purpose. Democrats are confident in their legal justification and say Trump is stalling in an attempt to punt the issue past the 2020 election.

The White House and the Republican president’s attorneys declined to comment on the deadline to turn over Trump’s returns.

Mnuchin has said Neal’s request would potentially weaponize private tax returns for political purposes.

Trump has privately made clear he has no intention of turning over the much-coveted records. He is the first president since Watergate to decline to make his tax returns public, often claiming that he would release them if he was not under audit.

“What’s unprecedented is this secretary refusing to comply with our lawful … request. What’s unprecedented is a Justice Department that again sees its role as being bodyguard to the executive and not the rule of law,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J. “What’s unprecedented is an entire federal government working in concert to shield a corrupt president from legal accountability.”

But the president has told those close to him that the attempt to get his returns was an invasion of his privacy and a further example of what he calls the Democrat-led “witch hunt” — like Mueller’s Russia probe — meant to damage him.

Trump has repeatedly asked aides as to the status of the House request and has not signaled a willing to cooperate with Democrats, according to a White House official and two Republicans close to the White House.

He has linked the effort to the myriad House probes into his administration and has urged his team to stonewall all requests. He also has inquired about the “loyalty” of the top officials at the IRS, according to one of his advisers.

Trump has long told confidants that he was under audit and therefore could not release his taxes. But in recent weeks, he has added to the argument, telling advisers that the American people elected him once without seeing his taxes and would do so again, according to the three White House officials and Republicans, who were not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations and spoke on condition of anonymity.

 
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Stay or Leave: US Visa Woes for Indian Doctors Nears Breaking Point

Posted on by SeeUS

“The American dream is no longer alive,” Dr. Tarkeshwar Tiwary lamented, looking back on a decade-long journey he has spent chasing a stable future in the United States for his two Indian-born children.

“I feel really demeaned,” he said.

A 45-year-old pulmonologist at a hospital in central Pennsylvania, Tiwary is one of 300,000-plus Indian immigrants awaiting legal permanent residency under an employment-based visa. 

He is among the nearly 50,000 licensed Indian physicians working in the United States, and he says he feels invested in his rural community of 20,878. But the wait for a green card — a pathway to citizenship — is becoming too long to bear.

“What was promised to me was that if I intend to immigrate, I will be immigrating in a reasonable period of time,” Tiwary said. “If I had gone to any other country, like Canada or Australia, I would have been a citizen much, much earlier.”

For employment-based visa applicants, the timeline to receive a green card can vary, but none face wait times remotely as long as Indians — up to 151 years for applicants today. 

One common route to permanent residency is through an H-1B dual-intent temporary visa, under a “specialty occupation.” Indian nationals comprise three-quarters of all H-1B visa holders — a majority in computer-related occupations — but a 7% per-country, per-year limit on employment-based preference green cards has exacerbated wait times across all professions.

“[Wait times have] been increasing since 2003-2004, where there was a big jump and USCIS [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] basically stopped processing them for a couple years,” said David Bier, immigration policy analyst at CATO Institute. “It’s taken off, increasing up to a decade for people who applied 10 years ago. And that’s with serious attrition too. Lots of people have given up.”

Like others in his field, Tiwary’s decision of whether to stay in the U.S. or leave comes down to what is best for the family. His kids — a daughter entering high school and a son at the University of Pittsburgh — have spent a majority of their lives in the U.S. and “think to themselves that they’re American,” but will lack any viable employment options in the country as they enter the job market. That is, unless Tiwary’s luck changes soon. 

Rural communities hit hardest

Should Tiwary and other Indian physicians abandon their efforts and leave the U.S., local residents from Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Maryland who travel more than an hour for specialized or subsidized care could feel the pinch, adding to the growing health-care shortage woes plaguing rural America.

At Chambersburg’s Keystone Health, nearly one in five patients lives in poverty and 65% of pediatric patients receive medical assistance, according to President & CEO Joanne Cochran. A federally-qualified health center, Keystone relies heavily on foreign-born family doctors, many of them from India on H-1B and J-1 exchange visitor visas.

“We have Indian doctors in family medicine, psychiatry … pediatrics, internal medicine, infectious disease, urgent care…” Cochran told VOA. “It would be a huge hardship [if they were to leave].”

The foreign-born talent at Keystone includes Dr. Jagdeep Kaur, an addiction psychiatrist and mother of two U.S.-born children, ages 3 and 5. In addition to concern for her aging parents abroad, whom she is unable to sponsor, Kaur’s frustration lies in the restrictions that her temporary visa imposes on her work, hampering her ability to grow the scope of her practice and contribute research to the state’s opioid epidemic. 

Also in limbo is Dr. Mohamed Abdus Samad, a 32-year-old nephrologist at Chambersburg Hospital, whose dialysis patients travel upward of 80 to 100 kilometers (50 to 60 miles) to see him. As the need for kidney specialists increases and his bonds with patients grow stronger, the decision to wait for a green card becomes harder.

“They are grateful for the care that they get, but it also puts pressure on me,” said Samad, who is on an H-1B visa through 2020. “If I want to make any move, I have to think about what will happen to those patients.”

Christine Newman, a patient of Samad, worries it could take months to book an appointment at another hospital, if he and physicians facing similar predicaments were to leave.

“They’re doing what they’re supposed to,” Newman said. “[The U.S. government] should cut through that red tape and get them in.”

Amy Thatcher, a Keystone patient from Spring Run, Pennsylvania, says her Indian doctor, Raghav Tirupathi, saved her life after discovering her hand had become infected by a staph bacteria (MRSA) following a joint replacement procedure. To lose her doctor because of an ongoing visa issue, she said, would be “devastating.”

“We base our trust in the people that we see, and we continue to see them,” Thatcher said.

‘Difficult political lift’

At the present rate, Bier, at the CATO Institute, predicts Indian immigrants will continually drop out in large numbers.

In February, the U.S. House of Representatives introduced the bipartisan Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2019, which seeks to eliminate the per-country cap on employment-based immigrant visas, while increasing the per-country cap on family-based immigrant visas.

But while addressing what Bier calls “nationality-based discrimination,” the House bill and a similar measure introduced in the Senate face opposition among some foreign nationals previously unaffected by the backlog. 

Last year, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) sent a letter to corporations lobbying for a previous version of the bill, arguing that it would risk “creating a monopoly over the green card process” and “exacerbate” the impact of the Trump administration’s travel ban on Iranian nationals.

“[It’s] a difficult political lift,” Bier told VOA. “Everyone else has an incentive to keep the system the way it is — where Indians have to wait an indefinite period of time, basically — and everyone else basically gets ushered to the front of the line, ahead of them.” 

Adding to Indian doctors’ dilemmas is the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) proposed rules to end the President Barack Obama-era H-4 employment authorization program, known as H4 EAD, which allows certain spouses of H-1B visa workers to gain employment. If rescinded, it would affect some 90,000 spouses — mostly Indian women with advanced degrees.

Geetha Potineni, a network security administrator with master’s degrees in computer science and biotechnology, is one of them. Her husband, Dr. Venkat Konanki — a nine-year pediatrician at Keystone Health — says the prospect of his wife retaining the ability to work is as important as his own eventual green card prospects.

“Instead of that, how about just going back to India?” Konanki recalls of the conversations at home, with Potineni and their two U.S.-born daughters, ages 7 and 9. 

“If there was no discrimination in allotting green cards based on country of birth, I would have never needed H4 EAD,” Potineni wrote in an email to VOA. “With two advanced degrees, I never thought of not utilizing my education.” 

“I’ve always wanted to contribute both at home and outside of it,” she added.
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Can Kissing Cousins Wed in the US?

Posted on by SeeUS

What do famous Americans such as author Edgar Allan Poe, Wild West outlaw Jesse James and theoretical physicist Albert Einstein have in common?

They all reportedly married their first cousins.

The legality of cousin marriage in the United States varies from state to state. The practice is illegal in 25 states. A first cousin is the child of either parent’s brother or sister.

In some societies around the world, marrying a first cousin is often preferable, not only to keep property or money within the family, but in some cases to keep a “good catch” from going off with a stranger.

But the practice is generally viewed as taboo in the United States.

Opposition to first-cousin marriage in the U.S. dates back to the Puritans, among the earliest European settlers in America, who opposed such unions as far back as the 17th century, according to the book “Consanguinity in Context” by medical geneticist Alan Bittles.

Marriages are considered “consanguineous” when couples are either second cousins or more closely related.

The first actual laws against first-cousin marriage appeared during the Civil War era, with Kansas banning the practice in 1858, followed by Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington, New Hampshire, Ohio and Wyoming in the 1860s.

While first-cousin marriages were once favored by the upper classes in the U.S., such alliances declined sharply in the mid-to-late 19th century, possibly because advances in transportation and communication offered perspective brides and grooms greater access to a wider pool of marital prospects.

Also, as families grew smaller, so did the number of marriageable cousins. And women became more independent during that period, so their marital options increased.

One of the earliest people to influence American public opinion on the issue was the Rev. Charles Brooks of Massachusetts. Brooks delivered a paper at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1855 that asserted first-cousin marriage led to birth defects among the children of such unions.

Alexander Graham Bell, best known for inventing the telephone, also waded into the debate. He suggested introducing legislation to ban consanguineous marriages in families with deaf-mute members so that the condition would not be inherited by children of such marriages.

A seven-year Columbia University study published in 2018 found that children whose parents are first cousins have a 4% to 7% probability of birth defects, compared with 3% to 4% when the parents are distant relatives who marry.

From 1650 to 1850, the average person was fourth cousins with their spouse, according to the study. By 1950, the average person was married to their seventh cousin. The researchers believe that today, many couples are 10th to 12th cousins.

The data on consanguineous marriage in the U.S. is “scant and incomplete,” according to Bittles. CousinCouples.com, a website for people who are romantically involved with their cousin, estimates that about one out of every 1,000 U.S. marriages is between first cousins.

However, Bittles finds that number to be unrealistically low.

“The recent large-scale migration to the USA of couples from countries where consanguineous marriage is traditional may not reveal their premarital relationship,” he told VOA via email. “In terms of numbers, this particularly applies to immigrants from Arab countries … where 20-plus percent of marriages are consanguineous, and South Asian countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan where more than 50% of marriages may be consanguineous.”

Some states allow first-cousin marriages only if the couple can’t have children because they are too old or one of the parties is found to be infertile.

When you look past first cousins, there are a number of prominent Americans who married more distant cousins. Presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both said “I do” to their third cousins. President Franklin Roosevelt was married to his fifth cousin, once removed. And the first wife of Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York and President Donald Trump’s lawyer, was his second cousin once removed.

Worldwide, only a handful of countries prohibit first cousin marriages.

“Besides the USA, they comprise the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan, the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and the Philippines,” Bittles says. “Even in the People’s Republic of China, the ban on first-cousin marriages is not enforced in officially recognized ethnic minorities where consanguineous marriage has been traditional.”

Bittles expects the number of cousin marriages in the U.S. to diminish over time as family sizes decline and there are fewer cousins available to marry, and as the children of migrants internalize negative mainstream U.S. views on marrying your cousin.
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Climate Change Missing as US Defends Arctic Policy

Posted on by SeeEU

The Arctic is melting, but don’t ask U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to talk about climate change. Nor even to agree on a text that mentions it.

For the Trump administration, disappearing sea ice in the world’s “high north” appears to be first and foremost an economic opportunity to exploit rather than a crisis to mitigate.

That position was made clear by Pompeo over two days of meetings in the northern Finnish city of Rovaniemi involving the foreign ministers of the eight members of the Arctic Council — Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States.

“Steady reductions in sea ice are opening new naval passageways and new opportunities for trade, potentially slashing the time it takes for ships to travel between Asia and the West by 20 days,” he said in a speech Monday, which was met with polite but muted applause.

“Arctic sea lanes could become the 21st century’s Suez and Panama Canals.”

Finnish Foreign Minister Timo Soini, whose country is wrapping up its two-year chairmanship of the council, said Tuesday there will be no joint declaration as the summit couldn’t get the U.S. to agree on a text that includes language about climate change.

A senior U.S. official, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity, downplayed the failure to craft a declaration and defended Pompeo’s omission of “climate change” from remarks.

“Just because you don’t have a certain phrase in it, you can’t infer that the United States has taken a position that is anti-environment,” the official said.

Pompeo did acknowledge environmental concerns, and told the meeting Tuesday that “the Trump Administration shares your deep commitment to environmental stewardship.”

“The Arctic has always been a fragile ecosystem, and protecting it is indeed our shared responsibility,” Pompeo said.

Over the summit, Pompeo also defended President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord in 2017, a day after a U.N. biodiversity report warned that extinction loomed for over 1 million species of plants and animals.

“Collective goals, even when well-intentioned, are not always the answer,” Pompeo said. “They are rendered meaningless, even counterproductive, as soon as one nation fails to comply.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said his country is “open to the widest kind of cooperation in the Arctic” and that existing international law “allows to reliably ensure all the national interests of all.”

Bill Erasmus, the chairman of the Arctic Athabaskan Council, a Canada-based group of indigenous people, expressed disappointment that a joint declaration had not been reached.

“We recognize that climate change is real,” he said. “Climate change is man-made, and our elders tell us that we are clearly in trouble.”

Official U.S. statements and documents prepared for the meeting did not refer to “climate change” and their scientific focus was limited to reductions in U.S. carbon emissions that predate the administration and research.

According to statistics Pompeo presented, U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions fell by 14% between 2005 and 2017, while global energy-related CO2 emissions increased more than 20%. In terms of black carbon, which is a particular threat to the Arctic, U.S. emissions were 16% below 2013 levels in 2016 and are projected to nearly halve by 2025, he said.

“I’m sure it was a good party,” Pompeo said of the negotiations in Paris. “I’m sure it felt good to sign the agreement. But at the end of the day, what matters to human health, what matters to the citizens of the world, is that we actually have an impact on improving health. And our technology, our innovation, the R&D we put in in the United States, that’s what will drive better climatic outcomes, that’s what will create cleaner air and safer drinking water, and that’s what I hope the whole world will focus on.”

Pompeo again declined the opportunity to mention “climate change” on Tuesday when he met with Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland who pointedly referred to the phenomenon as she played down a dispute with the United States over the sovereignty of the Northwest Passage.

“We have a very close, very fruitful collaboration,” she said. “And actually, as we see the conditions of the Northwest Passage changing with our changing climate, I think that’s actually grounds for closer collaboration with the United States.”

Pompeo replied by saying the U.S. is more concerned about Russia and China in the Arctic than ownership of the Northwest Passage.

“The challenges in the Arctic aren’t between the United States and Canada, let me assure you,” he said. “There are others that threaten to use it in ways that are not consistent with the rule of law.”

Canada’s Freeland said recent scientific studies that indicate temperatures could increase in Canada’s Arctic by 11 degrees Celsius (52 degrees Fahrenheit) are “terrifying” and that “we have a responsibility to be part of a collective solution.”

She also noted that “unpredictable weather patterns caused by climate change” are causing security threats and navigational issues.

Iceland’s foreign minister, Gudlaugur Thor Thordarson, was bleak in his assessment.

“We can expect due to climate change more drastic changes in the next two decades than we have seen in the last 100 years,” he said.

 
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Authorities: Toll From Niger Tanker Truck Blast Rises to 60

Posted on by SeeAF

The death toll from a tanker truck explosion near the international airport in Niger’s capital, Niamey, has risen to 60, authorities said Tuesday.

The tally is likely to rise further as the prognosis is poor for several people who sustained severe burns, security official Hamani Adamou Abdoul-Aziz told state television.

The overturned tanker exploded Sunday night as crowds gathered to collect spilt fuel.

Interior Minister Mohamed Bazoum, who inspected the site Monday, said people on foot and motorcycle had rushed to the scene to take fuel. According to witnesses, one biker failed to switch off his engine, causing a spark that ignited the 50,000 liters of fuel.

The driver of the tanker truck has told investigators that an electrical failure caused him to lose control of the vehicle and its brakes.

The truck overturned as he tried to bring it to a stop, senior police official Boubacar Rabiou Daddy told a TV station.

Before the blast, people ignored police trying to keep them away, and threw stones at firefighters, he added.

The massive explosion on the RN1 route near the international airport left the burnt truck’s wreckage, motorbikes and debris scattered over the road.

Nearby houses were damaged by fire.

About 40 people were reported injured, most of them in a very serious condition in hospital with severe burns.

 

 
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Pompeo Cancels Merkel Talks Over ‘Pressing Issues’

Posted on by SeeEU

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has canceled a planned meeting Thursday with Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin.

The State Department said the talks had to be rescheduled due to what it called “pressing issues,” without giving further details about the reasoning.

The statement said Pompeo looked forward to visiting Berlin soon and holding “this important set of meetings.”

It was not immediately clear if the changes in Pompeo’s schedule would affect his planned Thursday stop in Britain and visit Friday to Greenland.
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Zimbabwean Villagers Resist a Chinese Company’s Mining Project

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Zimbabwe has clamored for outside investment in recent years, but villagers north of the capital are resisting a Chinese mining project they say will spoil the environment and fail to bring them much benefit. 

The villagers are from Domboshava, a rocky area north of Zimbabwe’s capital, and they are disputing a Chinese company’s decision to start quarry mining. 

Seventy-year-old Florence Nyamande is among those saying no to the proposed project by Aihua Jianye Company.

“The Chinese are the money mongers of Zimbabweans. They take riches here, they take it to China. They do not develop our places. So we do not need them here,” Nyamande said. “Seriously with a deeper heart, seriously with a mind, we are disappointed. We said ‘No’ and ‘No’. That is multiplicated (multiplied) ‘No.’”

​The villagers do not think Aihua Jianye will create the 500 jobs in the area it promised. They also say the quarry mining will leave large ponds filled with dirty water. 

Zimbabwe Deputy Minister of Information Energy Mutodi – who is the parliament member for the area – is also against the $500 million quarry mining project. 

He says he is not going against President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s mantra that “Zimbabwe is open for business.”

“It is open to business, but not to business that is gong to affect our environment. We want to preserve the environment. We want our community to develop, yes. But let our environment remain intact. We cannot have a situation come here take the proceeds, enjoy it in other countries, yet our people remain poor,” Mutodi said.

Mutodi notes the Chinese company has advertised for only 40 jobs in the area, less than one-tenth of what it promised.

Percy Mudzidzwa, whose company GeoGlobal Environmental Solutions is representing the Chinese firm, rejects allegations that 20,000 people would be affected by the 33 hectare mining project. 

Some locals say the project will affect a graveyard and a natural spring. Mudzidzwa says that is not so. 

“Not even a grave is going to be moved. But there is a misconception. We proposed that that the graves be fenced. There is a spring, which is above the grave site, we proposed that the spring be fenced too,” Mudzidzwa explained.

Now the project waits for the country’s Environmental Management Agency to make a final call if the Chinese company can go ahead. 
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NATO Chief Visits Ankara in Bid to Block Russian Missile Sale

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NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is visiting the Turkish capital amid escalating tensions between alliance members Turkey and the United States over Ankara’s procuring of a Russian S-400 missile system.

The NATO chief’s visit is seen as a last-ditch attempt to persuade Ankara out of its purchase of the Russian missiles. 

Stoltenberg met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, along with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusolgu.

We “made evaluations on a wide range of issues, including NATO-EU relations and Turkey’s S-400 purchase,” Cavusolgu tweeted. 

Stoltenberg’s visit comes only a matter of weeks before Moscow delivers its S-400 missile system to Turkey. Washington is warning of sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, which bans significant weapon purchases from Russia.

U.S. officials claim the Russian missiles will compromise NATO defense systems, particularly the latest U.S. warplane the F 35, which Turkey is a joint production partner. The U.S. Pentagon warns the F-35 collaboration, along with the delivery of the jets, is also in jeopardy if the S-400s are delivered.

With time running out for a solution to the impasse, Erdogan emphasized what was at stake for NATO.

“We are at a time when threats such as terrorism are directly concerning the security of alliance,” Erdogan said Monday in a speech, with Stoltenberg in attendance. “There are serious divergences in the international security atmosphere.”

Analysts claim Stoltenberg was widely seen by Ankara as an honest broker in the S-400 controversy, avoiding taking sides and stressing the importance of dialogue. But he is hardening his stance.

“Decisions about military procurement are for nations to make,” he said. “But as I have said, interoperability of our armed forces is fundamental to NATO for the conduct of our operations and missions,” Stoltenberg said in an interview Sunday with Anatolia Agency, Turkey’s state-run news organization.

“I welcome and encourage the discussions about Turkey’s possible acquisition of a U.S. Patriot missile system,” Stoltenberg said.

Washington is offering its Patriot missile system as an alternative to Russia’s S-400.

​Until now, Ankara routinely claimed that only Washington was voicing opposition to the S-400 purchase. Turkish officials argued the dispute was a bilateral affair, rather than with NATO.

“This would never have happened if there had not been a vast erosion of trust between the two NATO allies triggered by several ongoing disputes. So, the context is important,” said Sinan Ulgen, head of the Istanbul-based think tank, Edam. 

Analysts claim Ankara’s portrayal of the missile controversy as a bilateral affair runs the risk of a dangerous diplomatic miscalculation. 

“NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg tells Turkey that every ally has the right to choose any system, they have that right to buy,” said international relations professor Huseyin Bagci of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University. “But the political consequences of buying the strategic systems, he does not say anything.”

Stoltenberg is walking a diplomatic tightrope, with NATO relying heavily on Turkish military support. 

“Turkey is a highly valued ally, and NATO stands in solidarity with Turkey as it faces serious security challenges,” Stoltenberg tweeted Monday.

Turkey has the second-largest army in the alliance after the United States, with its forces participating in operations from the Balkans to Afghanistan. In 2020, Turkey will take command of the NATO Response Force.

With Turkey bordering Syria, and the main transit route for many jihadists seeking to return home to Europe, Ankara is seen as vital by most of its NATO European partners in counterterrorism and intelligence cooperation.

Analysts claim such cooperation explains why Washington remains mostly alone in its public opposition to Turkey’s pricing the S-400 missile system.

However, Erdogan reminded Stoltenberg that Ankara, too, has its concerns over the commitment of its NATO partners. 

“We expect our friends in NATO to act only in accordance with the spirit of the alliance and to hold the alliance’s founding values,” Erdogan said, referring to Turkey’s fight against terror groups. 

Ankara is frustrated over the support lent by Washington and other European countries to Syria’s Kurdish militia, the YPG, in the war against Islamic State.

Until now, all sides appear ready to avoid any confrontation over the simmering tensions and disputes. But with the looming delivery of the S-400 to Turkey, analysts warn it could be a catalyst for a rupture in the alliance.
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New UN Campaign to Bring Youth into Gender Equality Fight

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The U.N. women’s agency launched a campaign Monday to bring a young generation of women and men into the campaign for gender equality ahead of next year’s 25th anniversary of the conference that adopted the only international platform to achieve women’s rights and empowerment.

UN Women announced its new “Generation Equality: Realizing women’s rights for an equal future” at a news conference where it also made public events planned to mark adoption of the 150-page platform for action to achieve gender equality by 189 governments at the 1995 Beijing women’s conference.

“Today, nearly 25 years after the historic Beijing conference, the reality is that not a single country can claim to have achieved gender equality,” said a statement from UN Women’s executive director, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. “Despite some progress, real change has been too slow for most women and girls in the world, and we see significant pushback in many places.”

“Women continue to be discriminated against and their contributions undervalued,” she added. “They work more, earn less and have fewer choices about their bodies, livelihoods and futures than men – and they experience multiple forms of violence at home, at work and in public spaces.”

Mlambo-Ngcuka said the General Equality campaign is aimed at speeding systematic change “on the laws, policies and outdated mindsets that must no longer curtail women’s voice, choice and safety.”

UN Women’s deputy executive director, Asa Regner, said at the news conference that there have been positive results since Beijing. She pointed to a record number of girls in school, better access to health care, a decrease in maternal mortality, more women in top positions in the business world and fresh efforts to address violence against women and to put women at peace negotiating tables.

​​But she said the biggest challenges are to change male-dominated “power structures” that leave far more women and girls facing poverty and violence.

Ahead of next year’s anniversary events, UN Women has asked all 193 U.N. member nations to submit details and data on what their countries have done to implement the 1995 Beijing platform, Regner said. As of Friday, she said, it had received 22 responses but hopes the entire membership will answer.

The Beijing platform called for bold actions in 12 critical areas for women and girls including combatting poverty and violence, improving human rights and access to reproductive and sexual health care, and ensuring that all girls get an education and that women are at the top levels of business and government, and the top table in peace negotiations.

Events leading up to next year’s anniversary include the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women’s annual meeting in March 2020 devoted to Beijing’s implementation, a high-level meeting when world leaders gather for the annual General Assembly session in September 2020, and a “Global Gender Equality Forum” co-hosted by France and Mexico in France bringing civil society representatives and activists of all ages together to look to the future. No date has been announced yet for that event.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at Monday evening’s opening of an exhibition on women who were part of the Soviet Union’s military effort in World War II that “we will not achieve peace” or any of the U.N.’s development goals for 2030 “without the full and equal participation of women.”

“Yet we all know that there is still a stark imbalance of power around the world, and we are even seeing a backlash in some areas against women’s rights,” he said.

Regner said the majority of countries favor progress on gender equality, but there is “pushback.” There are governments and movements, she said, that value “so-called traditional family values and other ideas around women’s and men’s roles both in families and in societies which do not correspond to international agreements, and which would not necessarily give women the space and possibility to decide over their own lives, bodies, economic empowerment, etc.”

Regner, a former Swedish minister, said UN Women’s task is to spur implementation of Beijing and other agreements – and “we will never back down.”
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Syrian Troops Captured Village, Strategic Hill from Insurgents

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Syrian troops captured a village and a strategic hill from insurgents Monday in the country’s northwest, pro-government media said, amid the heaviest fighting to hit the region in eight months. A nearby Russian air base was also targeted by a missile attack from militants.

The Syrian government’s advance was the deepest push so far this year into Syria’s last major rebel stronghold. The latest wave of violence, which began April 30, has raised fears the government may launch a wider offensive to retake the area, home to around 3 million people. It is also the most serious challenge to a Russia-Turkey sponsored cease-fire in place since September.

A senior Russian official said Russia’s air base in the coastal province of Latakia came under fire from the insurgents, the latest assault on the military post since Friday.

Gen. Viktor Kupchishin said the base was targeted twice Monday by “multiple missile launcher systems.” He blamed the attack on al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the group in control of most of the rebel-held enclave. He said 36 missiles were fired using a drone but were repelled by the defense system. There were no casualties or damage, he said. 

Kupchishin said the situation has “deteriorated dramatically” in the area. His comments were carried by Russia’s state-owned Tass news agency.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed great concern at the intensifying hostilities in what was supposed to be a de-escalation area and alarm at reports of aerial attacks on population centers and civilian infrastructure “resulting in hundreds of civilian dead and injured and over 150,000 newly displaced persons,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

Three health facilities were reportedly hit by airstrikes Sunday, bringing the total to at least seven struck since April 28, Dujarric said. Nine schools have reportedly been hit since April 30, leading to closures in many areas.

Guterres called for an urgent de-escalating as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins, and he urged all parties to recommit to cease-fire arrangements agreed to last September, Dujarric said. 

Insurgents in Idlib and Hama provinces, where the rebel-held enclave is located, have previously used drones to target the base. Most of those attacks were thwarted, but they often serve to ratchet up tensions in the area.

Earlier Monday, the government-controlled Syrian Central Military Media said the village of al-Bani and the nearby Othman hill in the northern countryside of Hama province had been captured by Syrian troops. 

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition-linked war monitor, confirmed that al-Bani had been captured and that troops were marching toward the hill. The Observatory said the intense fighting on Monday killed 20 people.

Jaish al-Ezzat, one of the main rebel groups in the rebel-held enclave Syria, said it destroyed a Syrian army tank and that all the soldiers inside were killed. The group described “fierce clashes” near al-Bani.

The latest round of fighting has killed dozens and displaced tens of thousands in Idlib and nearby rebel-held areas, who fled to safer regions further north. It’s the worst violence since September, when Russia and Turkey negotiated the cease-fire to avert a government offensive on Idlib and surrounding areas.

The Observatory reported more than 60 Russian airstrikes on insurgents Monday alone. 

Syria’s state news agency SANA reported that Syrian troops intensified their shelling of insurgents in northern parts of Hama province and the southern parts of Idlib.
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Startup Brews Change for Lebanon’s Special Needs Workers

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Farah Ballout’s big, infectious smile is the first thing that greets you at her workplace, a cafe in Lebanon with a mission to do more than just brew coffee.

Before she was hired, the 29-year-old — who has Angelman Syndrome, a genetic disorder that means she has developmental disabilities — had struggled to find work in a country with high unemployment.

“I feel like it is a dream that I started here,” Ballout said as tears rolled down her face. “It feels like you are walking into your home — it doesn’t feel like you are going to work.”

Almost all the 14 staff at the Agonist coffee shop near Beirut where Ballout has worked for the past five months have special needs, from autism to Down’s Syndrome.

Wassim El Hage set up the business in December to help people with disabilities, who are typically excluded from the workforce in Lebanon.

As a social enterprise — a business that aims to do good as well as make profit — it faces even more of a challenge than most startups in a country whose economy has been badly hit by years of political instability and a mass influx of refugees.

The country is grappling with an unemployment rate of 30 percent, and nearly 2,200 businesses closed last year, according to Lebanon’s chamber of commerce.

For El Hage, that was part of the motivation — Lebanon, he said, desperately needs organizations prepared to hire people who would otherwise struggle to find jobs.

“It is not my target to make money or to make profit for my own self. My target is to give them back this money [for them] to be integrated, to be independent, to have a real life,” he told Reuters. “We need it in Lebanon.”

The tiny country is home to more than a million refugees, mostly from its war-ravaged neighbor Syria.

Since its own civil war ended in 1990, Lebanon has faced a raft of challenges, from electricity shortages to garbage mountains due to a lack of landfill sites — and now social enterprises are stepping in to help.

These include Compost Baladi, which manages waste and compost, and SunRay Energy, which helps rural communities in Lebanon adopt solar energy with a lease program and flexible payments.

But social entrepreneurs say a lack of funding and government support are making it difficult for such ventures to thrive.

‘Snowball of change’

Unlike many countries including Britain and Thailand, Lebanon offers no tax breaks or other incentives to help the sector.

“There is no single governmental policy or strategy to manage the social enterprises field,” said George Ghafary, head of a social enterprise that employs former substance abusers, prisoners and disadvantaged women to work on environmental projects. “Social enterprises can create a snowball of change, especially if the government offers incentives to existing companies … thus creating even bigger impact.”

No one at the Labor Ministry was available for comment on the government’s policy.

Samer Sfeir co-founded ProAbled, which trains people in Lebanon with special needs to work and companies to hire them. He bemoaned a lack of funding for social enterprises and contrasted the government’s approach with that of Britain, where the government actively seeks out such businesses to supply publicly funded goods and services.

“It is not difficult to start a social enterprise, but to scale it is hard … everybody is focused on starting something new, not working on helping what already exists,” he said.

“Regular business already struggle in Lebanon’s economy, but social enterprises have even a more difficult time, because it is more costly to run, and eventually your profit margin is less because you are giving back.”

Acceptance

It is a problem El Hage, 32, is familiar with. He started Agonist with his own money after failing to raise private investment due to skepticism the cafe would be a success.

In fact, he said, Lebanese people have come from all over the country to get their caffeine fix with a side of banter from people they would not usually get to meet.

As coffee and pastries are handed out, staff often sit and chat with customers. Before leaving, each customer is asked to put their hand in a basket and pick a positive proverb.

“This big-time changes the way Lebanese see people with disabilities — to accept them exactly as they are,” said one return customer, Vincent El Khoury. “Many people look at them as less than, and I hate this.”
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Israel’s Gaza Blockade Under Scrutiny After Latest Violence

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For 12 years, Israel has maintained a blockade over the Gaza Strip, seeking to weaken the territory’s militant Hamas rulers. And for 12 years, Hamas has remained firmly in power, developing a thriving homegrown weapons industry along the way.

This weekend’s violence, the worst in a string of flare-ups since a 2014 war, provided the latest illustration of the limitations of the blockade and fueled calls Monday in Israel for a rethinking of the longstanding policy, which many see as ineffective and even counterproductive.

“Israel, similar to the leaders in Gaza, must look forward. Only an economic solution to the Gaza Strip, and orderly work, will bring quiet and money and dignity,” Smadar Peri, a veteran Israeli defense commentator, wrote in the Yediot Ahronot daily. “It would be a very good idea, in tandem with the umpteenth talks on a cease-fire, to decide to steer toward a businesslike dialogue.”

This will be no easy task. Israel and Hamas are bitter enemies that have fought three wars since the Islamic group seized control of Gaza from the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority in 2007.

Israel considers Hamas, which seeks Israel’s destruction, a terrorist group, while Hamas sees Israel as an illegal occupier. They do not speak to one another, communicating through Egyptian, Qatari and U.N. mediators.

The Israeli blockade has been a driving factor in the three wars, numerous smaller battles and countless rounds of negotiations over the years as Hamas demands an easing of the closure in exchange for a halt in rocket fire.

Israel and Egypt, which borders Gaza to the south, imposed the blockade after the 2007 Hamas takeover, seeking to prevent Hamas from smuggling weapons into the territory. Since then, Israel has controlled Gaza’s airspace and coastline, and restricted the flow of goods and people in and out of the territory.

Eitan Dangot, the former commander of COGAT, the Israeli defense body responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs, said Israel has no choice but to enforce the blockade.

“Because Hamas has refused to accept Israel as a state, refused to move toward disarmament, refused to declare a long-term cease-fire and stop launching rockets, we have all the right to maintain the blockade as long as we can avert a humanitarian crisis,” he said.

“If we open the borders, do you believe that Hamas will disarm itself and not produce new rockets in its factories?” he added. He gave no alternative, beyond allowing small-scale “goodwill gestures.”

But the effects of the blockade have been devastating for Gaza’s civilians. Unemployment has soared above 50%, according to U.N. estimates, and is even higher for younger workers in their 20s and 30s. Gaza suffers from chronic electricity outages. Its water is undrinkable, and the poverty rate is rising.

Yet Hamas seems stronger than ever. And despite the Israeli pressure, it possesses a seemingly never-ending supply of rockets, some of which are capable of striking deep inside Israel.

Hazem Qassem, a Hamas spokesman, boasted that the group has been able to continue to fight, thanks to its ability “to shift to self-reliance and produce weapons locally.” 

While the group’s arsenal is no match for the powerful Israeli military, it gives Hamas enough power to greatly disrupt life on the other side of the border whenever it sees the need.

In the latest fighting, Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad militant group launched roughly 700 rockets into Israel over two days, while Israel responded with several hundred airstrikes on militant targets in Gaza.

Twenty-five Palestinians, including at least 10 militants, and four Israeli civilians were killed before a cease-fire was reached Monday. They were the first Israeli fatalities from rocket fire since the 50-day 2014 war.

For both sides, it has become a familiar scene. Accusing Israel of violating past understandings, militants fire rockets. Israel retaliates with airstrikes, fighting escalates and another vague cease-fire is reached in which Israel promises to ease the blockade if rocket fire stops.

These battles, however, have become increasingly violent and frequent. Israel and Hamas engaged in two rounds of fierce battles in March, following fighting in November and last summer. In addition, Hamas has been orchestrating weekly mass protests against the blockade for over a year along the Israeli border. Some 200 Palestinians and an Israeli soldier have been killed in protest-related violence.

Perhaps with this on people’s minds, the cease-fire announcement got a cool reception in Israel.

Gideon Saar, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, said the truce was “bereft” of benefits for Israel. “The war hasn’t been averted, only postponed,” he wrote on Twitter.

Yair Lapid, a leader of the opposition Blue and White party, called on the government to use heavier force against militants, but also to show “political bravery” and help Gaza’s civilians.

“Major economic projects in Gaza will cause the civilian population to tell Hamas, ‘stop firing, we have too much to lose,’” he said.

Netanyahu is unlikely to make major policy changes anytime soon. Fresh off an election victory, he is engaged in coalition negotiations with smaller, hard-line parties that will oppose any concessions, even if he wanted to make them.

With Muslims marking the holy month of Ramadan and Israel marking its Memorial Day and Independence Day this week and hosting the Eurovision song contest next week, neither side appears eager to return to fighting.

That should give international mediators at least a few weeks to shore up the latest cease-fire and try to press ahead on some of Israel’s deeper pledges, such as expanding Gaza’s fishing zone, increasing the electricity supply to Gaza and implementing an internationally funded jobs program in Gaza.

Broader concessions, however, remain a long way off. Israel will demand disarmament as well as the release of two captive Israeli civilians, and the return of the remains of two Israeli soldiers, held by Hamas as a condition for a wider easing.

Still, there seems to be a growing awareness that something must change. Otherwise, it’s just a matter of time before the next round of violence.

“I think that Israel is ready to reconsider the whole blockade, or at least to ease it,” said Kobi Michael, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, a Tel Aviv think tank.

“It’s clear that the only way forward is to cooperate with Hamas, Egyptians, Qataris, and find the right mechanisms for Hamas to rule the Gaza Strip effectively,” he said.
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Turkish Kurd Leader Ocalan Meets Lawyers for First Time Since 2011

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The leader of Turkey’s militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, has met his lawyers for the first time in eight years, one of them said on Monday.

“This is the first meeting with the lawyers since 2011. The meeting lasted approximately one hour” on May 2, Rezan Sarica told an Istanbul press conference.

Some 3,000 Kurdish prisoners have been holding hunger strikes since November to protest his isolation, and eight have killed themselves over the issue, according to the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party.

Nevroz Uysal, another of Ocalan’s lawyers, read out a message from the imprisoned leader for the hunger strikers to limit their protests.

“We respect the resistance of our friends inside and outside prisons but want them not to carry this to a dimension that will threaten their health or result in death,” Ocalan said, according to Uysal.

Ocalan’s message also addressed the situation in neighboring Syria where a US-backed Kurdish militia — branded as “terrorists” by Ankara — controls some areas in the north.

“We believe that problems in Syria should be resolved by avoiding the culture of conflict,” Ocalan said according to the lawyer.

He said the Syrian Kurds should have constitutional guarantees, while respecting “Syria’s integrity.”

“In this regard, Turkey’s sensitivities should be taken into account,” he added.

Ankara says the Kurdish YPG — a key US ally in the fight against Islamic State jihadists — is a Syrian offshoot of the PKK, and the issue is a major source of friction in Turkish-US ties.

Turkey captured Ocalan, then public number enemy one, in February 1999 and imprisoned him on the heavily fortified island of Imrali off Istanbul where he has been kept for 20 years.

“It is not yet clear if the meetings with lawyers will continue periodically,” added Sarica, who met Ocalan with Uysal.

“Only two lawyers were allowed to meet him although four lawyers applied,” he added.

The PKK is listed as a terror group by Ankara and its Western allies. The Kurdish insurgency in Turkey has claimed more than 40,000 lives since 1984.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has hardened his rhetoric towards Kurdish rebels since the last ceasefire broke down in 2015, reducing the odds of a political solution to the long-running conflict.

Ocalan’s brother, Mehmet, was permitted to visit him in prison in January for the first time since 2016.

The rebel leader was born into a poor peasant family in the village of Omerli in Turkey’s southeast. His official birthdate is April 4, 1949.

He was sentenced to death for treason after his capture by Turkish agents in Kenya, but this was commuted to life imprisonment when Turkey abolished capital punishment in 2002, when it appeared close to securing membership in the European Union.
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US Wary of Chinese, Russian Military Presence in Arctic

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Aimed at countering China and Russia’s expansion in the Arctic, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Monday the United States will increase its military presence in the polar region.

“We are hosting military exercises, strengthening our force presence, rebuilding our icebreaker fleet, expanding Coast Guard funding, and creating a new senior military post for Arctic Affairs inside our own military,” said Pompeo after arriving in Rovaniemi, Finland, for a meeting of the Arctic Council.

“The region has become an area of global power and competition,” he said.

The top U.S. diplomat’s warning comes days after a Pentagon report said China could use its civilian research presence in the Arctic to strengthen its military presence.

In Beijing, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Geng Shuang pushed back Monday, saying China has been adhering to the path of “peaceful development” and asked the United States to abandon “the outdated concept of Cold War mentality and the zero-sum game.”

With the steady reductions in sea ice in the polar region, new naval passageways and trade opportunities are seen to be opening up.

Last month, Russia announced plans to connect the Northern Sea Route with China’s Maritime “Silk Road,” a move seen as developing a new shipping channel from Asia to northern Europe.

Meanwhile, China’s interest in the Arctic has been on the rise in recent years.

Beijing’s Arctic policy says “China hopes to work with all parties to build a Polar Silk Road through developing the Arctic shipping routes.”

Sounding the alarm on China’s ambition, Pompeo rejected interference by non-Arctic countries in the polar region.

“There are only Arctic States and non-Arctic States. No third category exists,” said Pompeo during his speech in Finland Monday.

Military officials from Russia and China said both countries intended to regularly conduct joint war games, following last September’s massive Vostok (East) 2018 military exercises that spanned extensive regions of Siberia, Russia’s Far East, the Arctic, and the Pacific Oceans. China was invited for the first time to join the drill.

In May of 2013, China became an “observer state” of the Arctic Council with the help of Iceland. Last year, a China-Iceland joint Arctic Research Observatory was established in Karholl, Iceland.

The Arctic houses 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil, 30 percent of its undiscovered gas, and an abundance of resources, including uranium, rare earth minerals, and millions of square miles of untapped fisheries.
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South Africa Political Parties Race to May 8 Poll

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South Africa’s top three political parties sprinted towards the finish line before Wednesday’s poll, with the leaders of each party giving impassioned pleas to a deeply divided, conflicted electorate of 26.7 million people.

The ruling ANC, the established Democratic Alliance (DA) and upstart Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) parties held their final rallies over the weekend in Johannesburg, the nation’s economic hub.

The long-ruling ANC leads the 48 parties contesting this year. The party has held power since 1994, but has weathered harsh criticism this year for a slew of government corruption scandals. The head of the ANC, President Cyril Ramaphosa, acknowledged that during the party’s final rally.

“We admit that we have made mistakes and we put ourselves before our people and say, Yes, we have made mistakes, but it is only those who are doing nothing who don’t make mistakes,'” he said to a full stadium in Johannesburg.

But analysts, like Ivor Sarakinsky of the University of the Witwatersrand, say the top parties’ biggest enemies may be themselves. “A lot of voters are conflicted,” he told VOA.

“I don’t think there’s a clear choice because the main parties, and even some of the smaller parties, are bringing enormous baggage into this election in terms of their own internal dynamics,” he added. “We focus on the ANC’s baggage and dynamics, but all the parties have their own baggage. The DA and the controversies in terms of internal leadership, the EFF in terms of internal leadership and questions about financial flows into the party. There’s controversy around all of them.”

He says the drama around corruption and internal leadership struggles —  notably within the ANC — have distracted from real issues like the economy and the fact that the nation remains deeply divided, socially and economically, a quarter-century after the end of apartheid.

“It’s about identifying a party that has a manifesto that meets most of your needs, interests and concerns in terms of where the country is going in the future,” he said. “And that’s a tough ask, because the manifestos don’t deal with what many people know are the real issues, and the politics and the emotion and the symbolism and the political tactics has distorted how many parties are marketing themselves. So it’s a tough choice for voters at the moment, in this election.”

Those conflicted or apathetic voters are exactly what the upstart, far-left EFF party is trying to mop up. Party leader Julius Malema, a one-time ANC stalwart, urged voters not to stay on the sidelines.

“Comrades, I want to say to all who are saying they are not going to vote because they don’t see how the vote helps them, you are committing a suicide, because by not voting you are giving the ANC power,” he told supporters at his party’s final rally.

The leading opposition DA is also hot on the ANC’s tail, with leader Mmusi Maimane urging voters not to vote based on appearances or personalities.

“I need your vote!” he told supporters. “My fellow South Africans, this is not a popularity contest. This is not about who looks like what, and whether you like this person. I’m not asking you to marry me.”
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China Prepares for Trade Talks Despite Trump’s New Threat

Posted on by SeeUS

China says its negotiators are preparing to travel to the United States for their next round of trade talks this week, even after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened higher tariffs on billions of dollars of Chinese goods after he complained the process is taking too long.

Trump’s comments about the new tarifs on Twitter on Sunday sent Asian stocks and U.S. futures tumbling Monday and added uncertainty over the figure of U.S.-China trade negotiations. Despite the market drop, China’s official media stayed silent on Trump’s comments all morning.

Hours later, Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters that China is “trying to get more information” about Trump’s comments about new tariffs but stressed that Beijing’s negotiating team is still preparing to travel to the U.S. for talks this week.

“The tweet is a big wrench in China’s foreign trade policy,” Nick Marro, Analyst at The Economist Intelligence Unit (The EIU) told VOA. “There were a lot of expectations that at least the groundwork for a deal will be finalized this week,” he said, explaining why Beijing should be upset by the new threat.

Tweet with teeth

In his tweet issued on Sunday, Trump said he would increase tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods from 10 percent to 25 percent on Friday. This would mark a reversal of a decision Washington took last February to keep it at 10 percent in the midst of trade talks.

“The Trade Deal with China continues, but too slowly, as they attempt to renegotiate. No!,” Trump said expressing dissatisfaction about the pace of trade negotiations and what he considers Chinese attempt to renegotiate some aspects of the proposed deal.

President Trump also said that his policy of hiking taxes on Chinese goods had paid dividends. “These payments are partially responsible for our great economic results,” he said.

He went further saying another $325 billion of Chinese goods which “remain untaxed” will be taxed at 25 percent. He did not specify a timeline for making this change.

Unaffected stance

In its response Monday, Chinese foreign ministry expressed hope there is no change in the situation and the two countries will continue to strive for an end to the trade war.

“What is of vital importance is that we still hope the United States can work hard with China to meet each other half way, and strive to reach a mutually beneficial, win-win agreement on the basis of mutual respect,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng said.

What the ministry did not clarify is whether China would send the same envoy, Vice Premier Liu He, as head of the official delegation as originally planned.

Echoing China’s confidence that trade talks would not be disrupted by Trump’s tweet, Shanghai based expert Shen Dingli said, “China and the U.S. have big and overlapping stakes in bilateral trade. They will overcome any difficulties for a successful outcome of the trade talks.”

The tweet has also made it difficult for Chinese President Xi to make a proposed China-U.S. deal acceptable to his domestic audience. Xi does not want to be seen as being bulled into accepting a deal by the U.S., Nick Marro said. “It has shattered the potential optics around the deal. The tweet makes the deal look like China has no choice but to listen to the U.S.”

Dingli sees nothing odd about Trump’s use of tweet as a foreign policy instrument although this aspect has been widely criticized in some circles.

“America does not have a propaganda department like the Chinese government. Therefore, Trump has invented something that is good for him,” Dingli said. “A competent propaganda department has made China powerful. My President does not need to use his own account in WeChat [Chinese social media app] to communicate,” he said.

Washington and Beijing have engaged in reciprocal tariff hikes over the last year while negotiators have engaged in lengthy trade talks, alternating negotiations between the two capitals.

Despite an initial goal of finishing by March 1, the two countries have continued to debate several issues, but have yet to complete a deal. Both sides, representing the world’s two biggest economies, have said progress is being made.

The two countries have been trying to resolve disputes over intellectual property theft and forced technology transfers. It is not clear whether the tariffs both countries have imposed will remain in place if an agreement is reached.
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US Officials Mum on What Prompted Bolton’s ‘Unmistakable Message to Iran’

Posted on by SeeUS

Anjana Pasricha in New Delhi contributed to this report.

WHITE HOUSE — U.S. officials were keeping mum Monday on what signals from Iran were responsible for an unusual statement issued the previous evening by National Security Advisor John Bolton.

A “number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings” linked to Iran prompted the United States to deploy an aircraft carrier strike group and bomber task force to the Middle East, said Bolton in his statement.

The dispatch is intended to “send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force,” added Bolton.

Both the National Security Council and Defense Department declined, when contacted by VOA, to provide any additional details.

In addition to the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, the strike group included fighter jets, helicopters, destroyers and more than 6,000 sailors when it left its U.S. port in (the state of) Virginia in early April.

The Nimitz-class carrier was in the Adriatic Sea as of May 1 when Albania’s president, Ilir Meta, visited the 333-meter-long vessel.

The deployment of the strike group had been planned “for some time now,” the chief of naval operations, Admiral John Richardson confirmed on Monday.

Speaking at a maritime exposition in the state of Maryland, Richardson, in response to a question at a seminar, characterized Bolton’s statement as a “great demonstration” of the navy’s capability to fluidly react to changing security situations.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, speaking to reporters traveling with him to Europe, declined to comment about what prompted the U.S. decision, but confirmed it had been under consideration for a while and that the administration has “good reason” to want to clearly communicate to Iran how it would respond to Iranian actions.

Bolton’s statement said the United States “is not seeking war with the Iranian regime, but we are fully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or regular Iranian forces.”

New America Foundation Fellow Ned Price says recent actions to sanction the IRGC and end sanctions waivers for some of the country’s biggest oil buyers make it seem like the Trump administration “seems intent on driving the Iranians into a corner.”

“The concern with Bolton’s threat — coming in the midst of a series of escalations from the Trump administration — underscores the concern that the administration is trying to goad the Iranians into an unwise and ill-considered reaction,” Price, a former spokesman for the Obama-era National Security Council, tells VOA.

The Trump administration has been working to apply what it calls a “maximum pressure campaign” against Iran to try to get the country to change its behavior, including its sponsorship of terror groups and what the White House alleges is a ballistic missile program that threatens the United States.

In response to last month’s U.S. designation of the IRGC as a terrorist group, Iran responded by declaring the United States a state sponsor of terrorism and its forces in the Middle East as terror groups.

Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities, a research group that advocates that America maintain a strong, dynamic military but wants it to try to avoid being deployed in overseas wars. DePetris says that while Iran is meddlesome, the threats it poses can best be addressed with deterrence and diplomacy.

“Maximum pressure will fail to change the regime’s behavior, but it will ratchet up tensions between the U.S. and Iran, possibly inciting a crisis or war, something Trump promised to avoid during his campaign,” DePetris tells VOA. “This is more evidence of a troublesome disconnect between the president and the people who ostensibly work under him. The Iranians are meddlesome actors, but they’re far from a threat to the U.S., the world’s only superpower.”

The vice president of the Heritage Foundation’s Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy praises the U.S. move.

“The U.S. is a global power with global interests and responsibilities,” James Jay Carafano tells VOA. “It’s a powerful statement to demonstrate the U.S. is not distracted by a host of challenges-in Venezuela, by provocations from North Korea, and yet, the U.S. has the resolve and capacity to show it can stand strong in the Middle East, as well.”

Bolton’s statement is raising concern in other countries.

India, whose economy is largely fueled by imported crude — much of it from Middle East countries such as Iraq and Saudi Arabia — is worried about the security of sea lanes through which its energy supplies flow.

“If you have a situation where Iran and America are actually entering into a confrontationist mode, then that will not only impact the two countries but the larger region,” says security analyst Harsh Pant at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.

“The question of what happens to the larger region, what happens to the sea lanes of communication, I think that is going to be a challenge if this results in something bigger… India will wait and watch and see how far it goes.”

India, which has friendly relations with Iran and a growing strategic partnership with the United States, is also under pressure to slash oil imports from Iran.

Except for saying that there will be additional supplies from other oil-producing countries, New Delhi has not stated clearly whether it plans to bring down its imports from Iran to zero as the United States wants.

There has been no immediate reaction from Iran to Bolton’s statement.

One week ago, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif accused Bolton and others, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, of “designing confrontation,” but added that he did not “think military confrontation will happen.”

Speaking to CBS News, Zarif accused the U.S. administration of “putting things in place for accidents to happen. And there has to be extreme vigilance, so that people who are planning this type of accident would not have their way.”

 

 

 
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US Military Trains Cameroon Troops on Medical Evacuations

Posted on by SeeAF

The U.S. military is training Cameroon’s military on first aid techniques and medical evacuation in order to reduce battlefield deaths.  Cameroon estimates that one-fourth of all soldiers killed fighting separatists and Boko Haram terrorists could have been saved with better care.

Twenty-nine-year-old soldier Poumje Amidou has been getting treatment for fractures since last October at the military hospital in Yaounde.

Amidou said he barely escaped death when separatist fighters attacked his base, leaving one of his colleagues dead and two others wounded.

He said what he remembers is that he bled profusely and had serious wounds on his left leg, stomach and right arm.

Amidou’s life was saved when a Cameroon military helicopter rushed him to the hospital.

But others were not so lucky.

In recent years, about 117 soldiers have died from wounds that would not have been fatal had they received the correct first aid, according to Cameroon’s military.

That’s about one-fourth of all Cameroonian military deaths in the battles against English-speaking separatists and the Nigerian militant group Boko Haram.

Better care for the wounded

U.S. military advisers are working to prevent future deaths by training soldiers to provide better care for the wounded.

Major Mommearts, who did not give his first name, is one of the U.S. trainers.

He said the course on MEDEVAC – medical evacuation – includes evacuating casualties by air, known as CASEVAC.

“We talked about the different levels of CASEVAC, so you have your own legs, you can move the patient yourself, you have different pack bones that they can use. Make sure they are not bleeding while they are being transported.”

In February, the U.S. announced it was cutting some security assistance to Cameroon following allegations that Cameroon’s military was committing human rights violations.

The U.S. says despite the reduction in military aid, relations between the two countries are good.

The director of Cameroon’s military health, Colonel Abeng Mbozoo, said those ties are shown by the U.S. medical training.

He said the training is an indication that military cooperation between the U.S. and Cameroon is excellent.  That is the reason the U.S. military has come to train their Cameroonian peers, said, Mbozoo, to save lives and prevent deaths in different battle grounds.  

Thirty Cameroonian military staff received the U.S. training this week and will pass on the knowledge to their colleagues.
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White House: US Carrier Deployment ‘Unmistakable Message to Iran’

Posted on by SeeEA

Steve Herman contributed to this report.

The United States is sending an aircraft carrier strike group and bomber task force to the Middle East in response to what National Security Adviser John Bolton said are “a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings” linked to Iran.

In a statement late Sunday, Bolton said the moves are being made to “send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.

He added that the United states “is not seeking war with the Iranian regime, but we are fully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or regular Iranian forces.”

The Trump administration did not give details about any particular threats and directed further questions about the deployment to the Department of Defense.

In addition to the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, the strike group included fighter jets, helicopters, destroyers and more than 6,000 sailors when it left its U.S. port in early April.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, speaking to reporters traveling with him to Europe, declined to comment about what prompted the U.S. decision, but said it had been under consideration for a while and that the administration has “good reason” to want to clearly communicate to Iran how it would respond to Iranian actions.

Iranian officials did not immediately give public reaction to Bolton’s announcement.

One week ago, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif accused Bolton and others, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, of “designing confrontation.”

“I don’t think military confrontation will happen,” Zarif told CBS News. “I think people have more prudence that allowing a military confrontation to happen. But, I think the U.S. administration is putting things in place for accidents to happen. And there has to be extreme vigilance, so that people who are planning this type of accident would not have their way.”

Ned Price, a fellow at the New America Foundation and a former spokesman for the Obama-era National Security Council, said recent actions to sanction the IRGC and end sanctions waivers for some of the country’s biggest oil buyers make it seem like the Trump administration “seems intent on driving the Iranians into a corner.”

“The concern with Bolton’s threat — coming in the midst of a series of escalations from the Trump administration — underscores the concern that the administration is trying to goad the Iranians into an unwise and ill-considered reaction,” Price told VOA.

The Trump administration has been working to apply what it calls a “maximum pressure campaign” against Iran in order to try to get the country to change its behaviors, including Iran’s sponsorship of terror groups and what the White House alleges is a ballistic missile program that threatens the United States. 

In response to last month’s U.S. designation of the IRGC as a terrorist group, Iran responded by declaring the United States a state sponsor of terrorism and its forces in the Middle East as terror groups.

Daniel DePetris, a fellow at Defense Priorities, a think tank that advocates American maintain a strong, dynamic military but wants it to try to avoid being deployed in overseas wars, said that while Iran is meddlesome, the threats it poses can best be addressed with deterrence and diplomacy.

“Maximum pressure will fail to change the regime’s behavior, but it will ratchet up tensions between the U.S. and Iran, possibly inciting a crisis or war, something Trump promised to avoid during his campaign,” DePetris said. “This is more evidence of a troublesome disconnect between the president and the people who ostensibly work under him. The Iranians are meddlesome actors, but they’re far from a threat to the U.S., the world’s only superpower.”

James Jay Carafano, vice president of the Heritage Foundation’s institute for national security and foreign policy, praised the U.S. move.

“The U.S. is a global power with global interests and responsibilities,” he said. “It’s a powerful statement to demonstrate the U.S. is not distracted by a host of challenges-in Venezuela, by provocations from North Korea, and yet, the U.S. has the resolve and capacity to show it can stand strong in the Middle East as well.”
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Possible Cease-fire Between Israel, Palestinian Militants

Posted on by SeeEA

Palestinian officials say a cease-fire with Israel has been agreed to by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

The agreement, reached with the help of Egyptian mediation, was to take effect at 01:30 UTC. So far the cease-fire seems to be holding.

An exchange of rocket fire and airstrikes has killed four Israeli civilians and at least 20 Palestinians since Friday. These are the first Israeli civilian deaths from cross-border fighting since 2014.

President Donald Trump says the United States supports Israel 100% as it defends its citizens from Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza.

“To the Gazan people — these terrorist acts against Israel will bring you nothing but more misery. End the violence and work toward peace — it can happen,” Trump tweeted Sunday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the army to keep up “massive strikes” against Hamas targets in Gaza in the deadliest fighting along the border in five years.

Palestinian deaths include a 14-month-old baby and her aunt killed by what Hamas calls an Israeli strike. Israeli intelligence says a misfired Palestinian rocket killed them. Neither claim could be verified.

 

Palestinian militants have shot more than 600 rockets and other missiles into Israel since Friday. Israel says the smaller military group Islamic Jihad fired the rockets, but it holds Hamas, which controls Gaza, responsible.  

The Israeli military says Palestinian militants have shot nearly 700 rockets from Gaza since Friday, and that Israeli forces have carried out strikes targeting 350 sites used by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Israel says the smaller military group Islamic Jihad fired the rockets, but it holds Hamas, which controls Gaza, responsible.

An Israeli airstrike also killed a Hamas commander, who Israel says was responsible for funneling money from Iran to the militants.

The current fighting was apparently sparked when an Islamic Jihad sniper wounded two Israeli soldiers Friday.

The Palestinians accuse Israel of failing to implement an Egyptian-brokered agreement to ease its blockade of Gaza in exchange for a halt in rocket attacks.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh issued a statement late Sunday saying his militant group is “not interested in a new war” and says he is ready “to return to the state of calm” if Israel “immediately starts implementing understandings about a dignified life.”

 

Israeli analyst Neri Zibler told I24 News that Netanyahu does not want a war with Hamas either.

 

“The greater good is to avoid needless wars. A war that you get into, you do not know how you will get out of it. A war that you go into and will most likely reach a conclusion and bring us back to the exact point we are in at the moment,” he said.

A 50-day war between Israel and Hamas in 2014 killed more than 2,200 Palestinians and left entire neighborhoods in ruins.

The latest fighting comes on the eve of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and as Israel gets ready for Independence Day celebrations later this week.

Israel also hosts the eagerly awaited annual Eurovision song contest in Tel Aviv later this month.
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