Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Friday called for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to be released from prison in London, urging an end to what he described as his “torture” in detention.Assange, 48, is in a British jail for skipping bail when he sought asylum in Ecuador’s embassy in London, where he spent nearly seven years to avoid extradition to Sweden over allegations of rape that were dropped in November.Assange is also battling U.S. attempts to extradite him over Wikileaks’ publication of vast caches of leaked military documents and diplomatic cables. He faces a lengthy prison term if extradited to the United States.A U.N. human rights investigator last year said Assange has suffered psychological torture from a defamation campaign and should not be extradited to the United States where he would face a “politicized show trial.”Lopez Obrador, a leftist who has close ties with Britain’s opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, expressed his solidarity with Assange and said he hoped the former hacker and activist is “forgiven and released” from prison.”I don’t know if he has recognized that he acted against rules and norms of a political system, but at the time these cables demonstrated how the world system functions in its authoritarian nature,” Lopez Obrador said in response to a question about Assange at a regular government news briefing.”Hopefully consideration will be given to this, and he’s released and won’t continue to be tortured.”Assange’s presence in London, holed up in Ecuador’s embassy and then in jail, has been a diplomatic irritation for Britain, affecting domestic politics and relations with several countries.Corbyn, who was a guest of honor at Lopez Obrador’s inauguration in December 2018, said Assange should not be extradited to the United States “for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan.”British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose Conservative Party trounced Labour in last month’s elections, has vowed to strike new trade deals with countries outside Europe after Britain’s departure from the European Union.
…
Month: January 2020
Montenegro Denounces Protest Attack on Embassy in Serbia
Montenegro on Friday strongly denounced aggression against its embassy in Serbia during a protest by thousands of ultra-nationalists, saying the actions of soccer hooligans who threw flares and chanted “Set it on fire” represented an attack on the country’s independence.The crowd targeted the unguarded embassy in Belgrade and tried to burn the Montenegrin flag during the Thursday night protest of a religion rights law adopted by Montenegro’s parliament last month. Serbs say the law discriminates against the Serbian Orthodox Church.Montenegro Prime Minister Dusko Markovic tweeted that the embassy attack was an “uncivilized” act and another challenge to his small country’s independence and freedom.He said it was “stunning” Serbian police did not protect the embassy on Thursday or during other recent protests.”We will save our Montenegro despite the hatred that is coming from the same actors inside and outside the country,” Markovic said.Montenegro split from much larger Serbia following a 2006 referendum. About one-third of the small Balkan country’s 620,000 citizens declare themselves as Serbs and want close ties with Belgrade.Led by the Serbian Orthodox Church and backed by Serbia’s state propaganda, pro-Serb Montenegrins have been holding daily protest marches against the new religion rights law.They say the law will allow the Montenegrin state to impound Serbian Orthodox Church property, including monasteries, churches and other assets. The Montenegrin government has repeatedly denied those claims.Adding fuel to the fire in what appears to be the lowest point in relations between the former Balkan allies, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on Friday announced a “private visit” with Montenegrin Serbs for Orthodox Christmas, which is celebrated on Jan. 7.He accused Montenegro’s prime minister of a “notorious lie” — that the embassy in Belgrade was not protected during the rioting.”We are not threatening Montenegro’s independence, you are threatening sacred monuments that don’t belong to you,” Vucic said.Montenegro’s Foreign Ministry summoned the Serbian ambassador Friday to protest what it said was “an unhindered nationalist spree” against the flag and embassy.Serbia’s Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic said the ambassador rejected the note, because it is an attempt by Montenegro to shift the blame for the crisis between the two countries solely onto Belgrade.He said the attempt to burn the Montenegrin flag is “counter productive” and “serves the interests of the enemies of the Serbian people.”U.S. Ambassador to Montenegro Judy Rising Reinke also commented.”Shocked at the image of the desecrated (hash)Montenegro flag at the country’s Belgrade Embassy,” she said. “Attack on a diplomatic mission is absolutely unacceptable. Difference of opinions must be resolved through dialogue, not violence or acts of vandalism.”Members of the same Serbian soccer fan group, known as “Delije,” were behind attacks against Western embassies in Belgrade in 2008, when the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade was set on fire as police stood close by. Then, the group was protesting a declaration of independence by Serbia’s former Kosovo province.Delije, Serbian for “tough boys,” are known for close ties with current Serbia’s ruling nationalist party and the secret police.
…
Losing Party in Guinea-Bissau Vote Appeals Result
Guinea-Bissau’s historic ruling party appealed to the Supreme Court on Friday after its champion lost in the volatile West African country’s presidential elections.Domingos Simoes Pereira, head of the PAIGC party, was credited with 46.45 percent in Sunday’s runoff, trailing opposition leader Umaro Sissoco Embalo’s 53.55 percent.Pereira had already rejected the result, telling party activists on Wednesday the vote was “full of irregularities, annulment and manipulation.”FILE – Presidential candidate Domingos Simoes Pereira holds a meeting with students at Lusophone university in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau, Nov. 21, 2019.”We are going to put forward all the evidence to show that the results have been changed,” he said.The PAIGC leader, like Embalo a former prime minister, had topped the first round of the election in November with 40.1 percent to Embalo’s 28 percent.Pereira’s PAIGC filed an appeal Friday “seeking to annul the result of the second round,” Supreme Court spokesman Salim Vieira said.The judges will gather Monday to consider the appeal, he added.Neighboring countries have been hoping for a smooth transition of power in a chronically unstable colony.Since independence from Portugal in 1974, Guinea-Bissau has been through four coups as well as 16 attempted, plotted or alleged coups.The PAIGC — the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde — is rooted in a Marxist-Leninist movement that fought to end Portuguese rule.It is the largest party in the parliament, having won legislative elections in March. The winning presidential candidate will take office 45 days after the announcement of the definitive results, an AFP journalist said.
…
Sudanese Military Plane Crashes in West Darfur, 16 Killed
A Sudanese military plane crashed in the western Darfur region, killing all 16 people on board including two women and two children, the military said. A Sudanese employee of the World Food Program and his family were among the casualties.Several officers were also among those killed when the plane went down Thursday evening in the restive region of West Darfur, which has recently witnessed deadly ethnic clashes.Abeer Atefa, the WFP spokeswoman for the Mideast and North Africa, told The Associated Press on Friday that one of the organization’s Sudanese employees who was on board with his wife and two children, was killed in the crash. The WFP could not release the staff member’s name or provide details, pending notification of next-of-kin.The plane, a Russian Antonov An-12, crashed five minutes after taking off from the airport in the town of Genena, according to an army spokesman, Brig. Gen. Amer Mohammed al-Hassan, who posted a statement late Thursday on the official Facebook page of the Sudanese armed forces.An investigation was underway to determine the cause of the crash, though there were no immediate reports of foul play. Al-Hassan said the casualties included seven troops, three judges and six civilians.The town of Genena has recently witnessed clashes between Arabs and non-Arabs that killed at least three dozen people, including women and children, according to a health official and a local aid group who spoke to the AP earlier this week.On Thursday, the Sudan’s Red Crescent said the casualty toll had jumped to 48 killed and 167 wounded in the violence. The local relief group has also said that more than 8,000 families were displaced after violence erupted in the region.The clashes pose a challenge to efforts by Sudan’s transitional government to end decades-long rebellions in areas like Darfur. In response, rebel groups from Darfur suspended peace talks with the government and called for an investigation.Earlier this week, Sudanese Prime Minister Hamdok and Gen. Mohammeed Hamdan Dagalo, deputy head of the Sovereign Council, had visited the town and expressed their commitment to prosecute the perpetrators.Plane crashes are not uncommon in Sudan, given the country’s poor aviation safety records. In 2003, a civilian Sudan Airways plane crashed into a hillside while trying to make an emergency landing, killing 116 people, including eight foreigners. Only a small boy survived the Boeing crash.Later on Friday, pictures of the funerals were posted on the official Facebook page of the Sudanese transitional government. They showed Hamdok and Dagalo along with dozens of men in military uniforms and civilians praying while victims’ bodies were laid on the ground wrapped in white coffins and awaiting burial.
…
E-Car Sales in Norway Reach Record High
Sales of new electric cars in Norway hit a record high last year, sector experts said Friday, reaching 42.4 percent of all nearly-registered cars in 2019, mostly thanks to strong demand for Tesla’s Model 3.Norway, a major oil producer that has pioneered electric mobility, offers a very advantageous tax regime for clean vehicles, making them highly competitive in cost terms against petrol and diesel vehicles.New e-car models arriving on the market should help push their share higher still this year, said OFV, a body which monitors Norway’s car market.In 2019, 60,316 all-electric new cars were sold in Norway out of a total of 142,381, a rise of 30.8 percent from the previous year when the market share of e-cars was 31.2 percent.The Norwegian car importer association said it expects e-cars to take a market share for new cars of 55 to 60 percent in 2020.New models including the Volkswagen ID.3, the Ford Mustang Mach-e, the Polestar 2 and the Peugeot e-208 are expected to boost e-car sales.”Today, in 2020 and in the years to come, a much larger range of cars is coming, with increased autonomy, greater size and in affordable price segments,” said OFV boss Oyvind Solberg Thorsen.U.S. firm Tesla was the biggest single seller of e-cars in Norway last year, with its latest Model 3 alone selling 15,700 units.Bigger goalsNorway’s Electric Vehicle Association called the numbers “very positive” but told AFP it had hoped for e-cars to account for 50 percent of new car sales last year.The association’s secretary-general, Christina Bu, called on the government to maintain tax breaks for electric cars, which have become the topic of much debate in the Scandinavian country.Norway, where electricity is almost exclusively generated by hydropower, has a 2025 target for all new cars to be zero-emission models.Hybrid cars, which run on both thermal and electric energy, accounted for 25.9 percent of the new car market in Norway last year, while petrol and diesel cars accounted for around 16 percent each.
…
Russia Condemns US Killing of Iranian Commander
Russia condemned U.S. airstrikes that killed a powerful Iranian commander in neighboring Iraq on Friday local time as a “reckless step” that risked “regional peace and stability” in the Middle East. The United States killed General Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, in a drone strike as he and an entourage left Baghdad’s main airport by car. Pentagon officials said U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the strike to prevent imminent attacks against American forces in the region. Yet with Iran’s leadership already vowing a military response, Russia openly questioned the White House’s understanding of the violent forces it had unleashed.”Such actions do not create … find solutions to complex problems in the Middle East. On the contrary, it will lead to a new round of escalation of tensions in the region,” said Russia’s Foreign Ministry in a statement posted to its website. In a separate statement, the ministry noted that Soleimani had “faithfully served and defended the national interests of Iran” and expressed condolences to the Iranian people over the commander’s death.The Kremlin’s press service later announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin had discussed the attack with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron by phone, with both sides agreeing “this action might seriously escalate tensions in the region.” FILE – A handout picture obtained from the Syrian Kurdish North Press Agency on October 24, 2019 shows Russian military police troops standing next to their armored vehicles in the northeastern Syrian city of Kobane on Oct. 23, 2019.The reaction reflected Russia and Iran’s increasingly close relations — ties forged by a four-year military alliance in Syria, where both Moscow and Tehran have come to the aid of their mutual ally, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. Several media reports say Soleimani — widely considered the military architect of Iran’s actions in the Middle East — met with President Vladimir Putin and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu in Moscow in 2016 to personally discuss the Syrian offensive. Both the Iranian and Russian governments denied the meeting ever took place. Soleimani is on a U.N. travel sanctions list and has been sanctioned by the U.S. since 2005 as a supporter of terrorism. Observers in Moscow saw little chance of Russia coming to Iran’s aide in the event of a wider military conflict.”There’s nothing Russia can do,” says Alexey Malashenko, a longtime Middle East watcher and head of the Institute of Dialogue and Civilization said in an interview with VOA in Moscow. “It’s a situation involving Iran, the U.S., and Iraq.” FILE – President Trump holds a proclamation declaring his intention to withdraw from the JCPOA Iran nuclear agreement at the White House, May 8, 2018.Nuclear deals Yet the U.S. strike on Soleimani again puts Iran near the top of a long list of issues causing friction between Moscow and Washington. The Kremlin already had clashed with the Trump administration over its decision to rip up the Iran nuclear deal —- a denuclearization swap for sanctions relief agreement brokered with Iran by the U.S. Obama administration along with Britain, Russia, Germany, France, and China back in 2015.Russia has found common ground with European powers in denouncing the Trump administration’s decision to abandon the agreement in favor of what the White House touts as a “maximum pressure” campaign that will yield a better deal limiting Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.Indeed, Moscow had been working with France and Germany to find ways to maneuver around U.S. sanctions and thereby keep Iran in compliance — an effort foreign policy experts now concede is all but doomed because of the U.S. attack. “The last hopes for resolving the problem of the Iran nuclear program have been bombed to shreds,” wrote Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in Russia’s upper chamber, the Federation Council, in a post to Facebook. “Iran can now push forward its nuclear program, even if it wasn’t planning to,” added Kosachev. “In that way, this is bigger than just the murder of one important figure.”
…
At Least Two Killed in Cambodia Building Collapse
At least two people were killed and more than a dozen injured when a seven-story building under construction collapsed in southern Cambodia on Friday trapping workers under the rubble, police told AFP.The building in coastal Kep province was meant to be a hotel but crumpled at around 4:30pm, with video circulating online showing concrete floors sandwiched together as firefighters and an excavator arrived.Cambodian leader Hun Sen said in a Facebook post on Friday evening he was travelling to the site.Around 30 people were believed to be trapped but 17 were pulled out and sent to hospital where two died, Ros Udong, spokesman for the Kep provincial administration, told AFP by phone.Deadly accidents plague the kingdom’s poorly regulated building sector even as the country has enjoyed a construction boom.In June nearly 30 people died after the collapse of a building under construction in Sihanoukville, a beach town undergoing a Chinese investment bonanza.Last month at least three workers died and more than a dozen others were seriously injured after an under-construction dining hall at a temple collapsed in the tourist town of Siem Reap.There are an estimated 200,000 construction workers in Cambodia, most unskilled, reliant on day wages and not protected by union rules, according to the International Labor Organization.
…
‘A More Dangerous World’: Iran Killing Triggers Global Alarm
Global powers warned Friday that the world has become a more dangerous place and urged restraint after the U.S. assassinated Iran’s top general, although Britain and Germany also suggested that Iran shared blame for provoking the targeted killing that dramatically ratcheted up tensions in the Mideast. China, Russia and France, all permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, took a dim view of the U.S. airstrike near Baghdad’s airport early Friday that killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani. The White House said in a tweet that Soleimani, who led the elite Quds Force responsible for Iran’s foreign campaigns, “was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.””We are waking up in a more dangerous world. Military escalation is always dangerous,” France’s deputy minister for foreign affairs, Amelie de Montchalin told RTL radio. “When such actions, such operations, take place, we see that escalation is underway.”Russia likewise characterized the deadly U.S. strike as “fraught with serious consequences.” A Foreign Ministry statement warned that “such actions don’t help resolve complicated problems in the Middle East, but instead lead to a new round of escalating tensions.” China described itself as “highly concerned.””Peace in the Middle East and the Gulf region should be preserved,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said. “We urge all parties concerned, especially the United States, to maintain calm and restraint and avoid further escalation of tensions.”But while echoing the concerns of other Security Council members about spiraling tensions, Britain and Germany broke ranks, voicing qualified understanding for the U.S. position. German government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer described the U.S. strike as “a reaction to a whole series of military provocations for which Iran bears responsibility,” pointing to attacks on tankers and a Saudi oil facility, among other events.”We are at a dangerous escalation point and what matters now is contributing with prudence and restraint to de-escalation,” she said. Germany currently sits on the U.N. Security Council but is not a permanent member. The British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, said “we have always recognized the aggressive threat posed by the Iranian Quds force led by Qasem Soleimani.” “Following his death, we urge all parties to de-escalate,” he said. “Further conflict is in none of our interests.” Montchalin, the French minister, indicated urgent reconciliation efforts are being launched behind the scenes. French President Emmanuel Macron and his foreign minister were reaching out to “all the actors in the region,” she said. In the Mideast, the strike provoked waves of shock, fury and fears of worse to come.Iraq’s most powerful Shiite religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, said in a speech during Friday prayers that the country must brace for “very difficult times.” In Iran, a hard-line adviser to the country’s supreme leader who led Friday prayers in Tehran likened U.S. troops in Iraq to “insidious beasts” and said they should be swept from the region. “I am telling Americans, especially Trump, we will take a revenge that will change their daylight into to a nighttime darkness,” said the cleric, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami.
…
First Deaf and Blind Harvard Law Graduate Says Accessibility Isn’t Charity
Haben Girma, a lawyer born deaf and blind, has advocated for accessibility from her hometown of Oakland, California, all the way to the White House. Now, she has written a book about her journey.In a phone interview with VOA, Girma read questions on a braille keyboard after they were typed out by an interpreter. She said her parents, immigrants from Ethiopia and Eritrea, refused to listen to those who said she could not do certain things.”One of the biggest challenges is people’s attitudes. People would say to my parents, oh, poor thing, she’ll never go to school, she’ll never get a job. And that was really hard for my parents to hear. It’s hard for me to hear, too,” she said. “Kids with disabilities want to hear that they’ll be successful. But society often tells us, from very young, that we won’t do anything.”Girma said she was fortunate to grow up in California’s Bay Area, where disability rights are well-established and numerous resources exist. She went to public schools where braille books, typewriters, assistive software and a special resource room were available. Still, she encountered challenges. In middle school, she discovered she was failing a class because she could not hear assignments the teacher was making from the back of the classroom. Later, at Lewis Clark College in Portland, Oregon, she could not read the menu at the school cafeteria because there was no braille version available.The challenges made her want to make a difference for others. In 2013, Girma became the first deaf and blind student to graduate from Harvard Law School.”There’s a lot of discrimination against people with disabilities. And I wanted to help change that,” she said. “Getting a law degree, building up your advocacy skills is a great way to build up the tools to help other people.”Taking Scribd to courtIn 2014, Girma put her legal skills to use when she sued Scribd, an online publishing platform and book subscription service, for discrimination because they weren’t making texts accessible to the blind. Girma argued the service wasn’t complying with the law under the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination against those with disabilities. The company claimed that because it operates online and doesn’t provide services in a physical space, The cover of Haben Girma’s book, Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard LawShe has traveled the world, meeting with local disability advocates and sharing her story. This included a trip to Ethiopia in 2015 where she met people pushing for more access to schooling and to improve the portrayal of deaf and blind people on television and radio. She said she tells organizations and businesses to stop looking at disability access as a charity and start looking at it as an opportunity.”When you do disability accessibility you’re not doing charity. You’re giving powerful work that helps your organization grow. It helps you reach more customers and it drives revenue,” she said. “So I want all organizations including organizations in Africa to stop treating disability as a charity and treat it as an important part of your organization.”She hopes her book, Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law, helps readers identify what she calls “ableism,” the assumption that disabled people are inferior.”We are not inferior. But society often sends this message. Through the stories in the book, funny stories, moving stories, I teach people to identify ableism to spot it when it’s happening and then to take steps to remove ableism,” she said.She also hopes to inspire young people who may become the next generation of disability advocates and boundary breakers.”I wanted kids to have more role models. You can be different. You can have something considered a severe disability and still succeed,” she said.
…
Deadly Indonesia Floods Raise Urgency of New Infrastructure, New Capital
The worst flooding in six years in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, has killed more than 40 people this week and focused attention on improving flood controls before the planned relocation of the capital.Nonstop rainfall Tuesday and Wednesday flooded 268 tracts in Indonesia, 158 in low-lying Jakarta, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said on its website. Drainage and levees in the capital are considered inadequate for storms of that scale, Southeast Asian economists say.Tuesday’s rainfall reached 377 millimeters (14.8 inches), a record since 2007, The Jakarta Post online said. The rains touched off landslides, trapped people in houses and prompted more than 19,000 to evacuate, local media reports say. The Red Cross federation put the number of displaced people at 31,232.Men swim as they collect items from their houses, flooded after heavy rains in Jakarta, Indonesia, Jan. 2, 2020.Trapped at home“We even couldn’t get out of our house, we even felt like we were in the middle of a big pond,’’ said Paramita Supamijoto, an international relations lecturer at Bina Nusantara University in Jakarta.Water levels inside her house topped out around 40 centimeters (15.7 inches) above the floor, she told VOA by phone. “The water outside our house was higher, I think about 50 or 60 centimeters (19.6-23.6 inches), almost half the height of the average adult,” she said. It left a stench and trail of dirt after receding.The Red Cross federation said flooding had injured 100 people. It called for donations of food, sleeping mats, baby kits, clean water and medicine. Some houses flooded up to their second stories.People look at a dam that collapsed after heavy rains in Bogor, West Java province, Indonesia, Jan. 2, 2020. (Antara Foto/Yulius Satria Wijaya/via Reuters)More flood controlCitizens of the city of 11 million want the government to improve flood control work, although much has been done already, said Rajiv Biswas, Asia-Pacific chief economist at market research firm IHS Markit. President Joko Widodo in July suggested building a seawall around Jakarta, much of which is below sea level.Officials may come out with a new “range of commitments” after the floods, Biswas said.The biggest step would be relocation of the giant archipelago’s capital to a site in East Kalimantan on Borneo Island. The president announced that move in August following three years of studies. The sparsely populated new site has a seaport, airport, low poverty levels and an educated population.“I don’t expect that this [flooding] in itself would be a cause of political unrest,” Biswas said. “If anything, it would probably support the case that President Jokowi [Joko Widodo] has been pushing to build a new capital city, which will be in a very different location in another island, and one of the reasons for building that new city is to create a site that’s less vulnerable to these risks of flooding and also other natural disasters.”A man collects a water to clean his flooded house in Tanggerang on the outskirts of Jakarta, Indonesia, Jan. 3, 2020.Analysts caution, though, that relocation would take years. In the meantime, Jakarta would remain heavily populated and packed with visitors as the hub of government.Jakarta is also known for air pollution and a dense population including families who live in lean-tos along riverbanks.Housing shouldn’t be built in flood zones and people should quit throwing trash in the rivers, Supamijoto said. She suggested that river channels be “normalized.”The urban drainage system struggles during major floods, Biswas said.“Moving the capital is also a good idea but it cannot be done within a few minutes because Jakarta has been our capital for a long time and socially people already get used to it,” Supamijoto said.“And then if you would like to move us to [the new capital], that might be a lot of process, a lot of issues and we cannot guarantee that the new capital will be safe from flooding and other natural disasters,” she said.Jakarta is used to floods and should recover economically within a few weeks, said Marie Diron, managing director with Moody’s Investors Service in Singapore. Flooding in January 2013 killed dozens and swamped Jakarta’s central business district.“We’ll observe the speed of recovery, what measures are taken to remedy the impact of the flood,” Diron said. She assumes Indonesia will return to “some sort of normal economic activity” within a few weeks and will take a second look at the country if not.Rainfall is forecast to pick up over the next four to seven days, meaning “water levels will further increase,” the Red Cross federation said.
…
US Kills Commander of Iran’s Elite Quds Force
The United States struck a significant and potentially risky blow against Iran, killing the leader of the nation’s elite Quds Force in an airstrike in Iraq.The Pentagon confirmed the death of Quds Force Commander General Qassem Soleimani in a statement late Thursday, saying the strike was launched, “at the direction” of U.S. President Donald Trump.It further described the strike as a “decisive defensive action to protect U.S. personnel abroad.”“General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region,” the statement said.“This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans,” it said. “The United States will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world.”The United States Friday urged its citizens to leave Iraq immediately. The embassy in Baghdad is closed and all consular services have been suspended.Baghdad airportThe Defense Department statement shared few details of the strike itself, but Iraqi officials said a rocket struck a convoy traveling near Baghdad International Airport early Friday local time.Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias, known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, also died in the strike, Iraqi officials said, adding other top officials may have been killed, as well.Even before the U.S. Defense Department confirmed the strike on Soleimani, photos claiming to show the Iranian general’s lifeless body were circulating on social media.FILE – These photos show Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, left, in Tehran; and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, right, a commander in the Popular Mobilization Force.Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, as well as Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, also quickly confirmed the deaths of Soleimani and al-Muhandis, blaming the United States.Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif called the U.S. strike an “act of terrorism,” tweeting it was an “extremely dangerous & a foolish escalation.”Iran Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called for three days of national mourning and warned, “All Enemies should know that the jihad of resistance will continue with a doubled motivation, and a definite victory awaits the fighters in the holy war.”President Trump did not immediately comment but tweeted a picture of the U.S. flag late Thursday.#UPDATE”US citizens should depart via airline while possible, and failing that, to other countries via land.” The US embassy in Baghdad urges American citizens in Iraq to “depart immediately”, for fear of fallout from US killing of top #Iran and Iraq commanders pic.twitter.com/V5asyM6vde— AFP news agency (@AFP) January 3, 2020Just days earlier, Trump warned Iran he was holding its leaders accountable for a series of repeated attacks by members of Iranian-backed militias on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.“They will pay a very big price. This is not a warning. It is a threat,” he tweeted. But he told reporters Tuesday that he did not foresee the U.S. going to war with Iran.“I don’t think Iran would want that to happen. It would go very quickly,” he said.U.S. Army paratroopers of an immediate reaction force from the 2nd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, board their C-17 aircraft at Fort Bragg, N.C., Jan. 1, 2020.Paradigm shiftsThe U.S. has already deployed 750 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division to Kuwait to help bolster the defense of U.S. bases and personnel in the region. Defense officials said Thursday more troops would be sent as needed.Among analysts and onlookers, though, there is a sense that whatever happens next, the paradigm between the United States and Iran has changed.“The strike was a clear signal from the U.S. that the parameters of our confrontation with Iran have shifted fundamentally,” said Ilan Berman, senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, in a message to VOA Persian. “Quite simply, the U.S. has demonstrated that it is no longer prepared to exercise restraint in the face of repeated Iranian provocation, the way it has in the past.”“There is significant risk here,” Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told VOA, calling the strike that killed Soleimani, “the most significant” since the U.S. killed al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden.The flag of General Soleimani in defense of the country’s territorial integrity and the fight against terrorism and extremism in the region will be raised, and the path of resistance to US excesses will continue. The great nation of Iran will take revenge for this heinous crime.— Hassan Rouhani (@HassanRouhani) January 3, 2020“Soleimani and Muhandis were revered by the Iraqi Shia militias. They will want blood,” he said. “It is unclear if the Iraqi security forces are able or even willing to do anything to prevent it.”Troops in the regionThe United States has about 5,000 troops in Iraq and about 55,000 more across the Middle East, all of whom could potentially be targeted by Iran.“The key question is whether this will ultimately lead to sustained military confrontation — even war — between the U.S. and Iran and Iran and Israel,” former State Department Middle East analyst and negotiator, Aaron David Miller, tweeted. “Matters will get worse before they get worse.”Suleimani’s assassination is among the most consequential in Middle East in decades.The key question is whether this will ultimately lead to sustained military confrontation — even war — between the US and Iran and Iran and Israel. Matters will get worse before they get worse.— Aaron David Miller (@aarondmiller2) January 3, 2020U.S. officials have repeatedly voiced concern about Iran’s military reach, warning Tehran’s forces are capable of targeting personnel and assets throughout the Middle East.Some of that concern has focused on Iran’s ballistic missile technology and on Iran’s naval prowess. This past July, Iran also disrupted naval traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, seizing several oil tankers.But there is also concern that Iran’s proxy forces, like the militias it supports in Iraq and Syria, are capable of inflicting considerable damage.“When you’re dealing with groups like this, they are a hell of a lot more threatening and a hell of a lot more organized than anything we’ve seen out of many Sunni jihadist groups,” said Phillip Smyth, an analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.“It doesn’t operate the same way you might think of, let’s say, the Islamic State,” he said. “You’re dealing with a far more organized apparatus.”Despite the risk, some key Republican lawmakers praised the U.S. strike against Soleimani.“President Trump has been clear all along — the United States will not tolerate Iran spilling American blood, and tonight he followed his words with action,” Republican James Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said in a statement late Thursday.“The President made the brave and right call, and Americans should be proud,” Republican Senator Benn Sasse, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said. “General Soleimani is dead because he was an evil bastard who murdered Americans.”Former U.S. Vice President and current presidential candidate for the Democratic Party Joseph Biden was more cautious. While admitting Soleimani “deserved to be brought to justice for his crimes against American troops and thousands of innocents throughout the region,” Biden in a written statement said President Trump owes the American people an explanation of the strategy and plan to keep American servicemen and diplomats and allies safe at home and abroad.“I hope the administration has thought through the second- and third-order consequences of the path they have chosen. But I fear this administration has not demonstrated at any turn the discipline or long-term vision necessary — and the stakes could not be higher,” he said.Although Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps [IRGC] and Quds Force are part of the Iranian military, the U.S. State Department designated them as Foreign Terrorist Organizations this past April because of their ties with Middle Eastern terror groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.The U.S. also blames the IRGC and Quds Force for the death of more than 600 U.S. service members in Iraq between 2003 and 2011.At the time, @SecPompeo was asked if the US would target #Quds Force Cmdr Qassem Soleimani like it would an #ISIS leader”I don’t have comments…when you say “target,” you’re usually talking about things that the Department of Defense does. I’ll allow them to respond ” he said pic.twitter.com/PPDtucbHHX— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) January 3, 2020Earlier Thursday, top U.S. defense officials said Iran’s targeting of Americans had resumed.“There’s been a sustained campaign at least since October,” General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters.“We know the intent of this last attack [on a base in Kirkuk, Iraq] was, in fact, to kill American soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines,” he added. “Thirty-one rockets aren’t designed as a warning shot.”Speaking alongside Milley, Defense Secretary Mark Esper warned the United States was also ready to take “preemptive action” against Iran.“The game has changed. We’re prepared to do what is necessary,” he said.VOA Persian Service and White House Senior Correspondent Steve Herman contributed to this report.
…
Reactions Swift to the Killing of Iranian General in US airstrike
The United States killed Iran’s top general and the architect of Tehran’s proxy wars in the Middle East in an airstrike in Baghdad Friday.Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was among the first Friday to react to the assassination of Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani, saying it would strengthen resistance against the United States and Israel in the region and the world, Iranian state television reported.“The brutality and stupidity of American terrorist forces in assassinating Commander Soleimani … will undoubtedly make the tree of resistance in the region and the world more prosperous,” Zarif said in a statement.On Twitter he said the assassination of Soleimani was “an extremely dangerous and foolish escalation. The U.S. bears responsibility for all consequences of its rogue adventurism.”FILE – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is followed by members of the news media inside Statuary Hall on Capitol Hill in Washington, Dec. 18, 2019.Authority for attackIt’s unclear what legal authority the U.S. relied on to carry out the attack. American presidents claim broad authority to act without the approval of the Congress when U.S. personnel or interests are facing an imminent threat. The Pentagon did not provide evidence to back up its assertion that Soleimani was planning new attacks against Americans. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the “highest priority” was to protect American lives and interests, but that “we cannot put the lives of American service members, diplomats and others further at risk by engaging in provocative and disproportionate actions.” “Tonight’s airstrike risks provoking further dangerous escalation of violence. America — and the world — cannot afford to have tensions escalate to the point of no return,” she said in a statement. She said Congress was not consulted on the strike and demanded it be immediately briefed on the situation and the next steps.FILE – Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and other Democrats respond to questions from reporters, May 6, 2019, on Capitol Hill.Senators weigh inIn the U.S., Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said President Donald Trump owes a full explanation to Congress and the American people.“The present authorizations for use of military force in no way cover starting a possible new war. This step could bring the most consequential military confrontation in decades,” Blumenthal said.But Trump allies were quick to praise the action.“To the Iranian government: if you want more, you will get more,” tweeted South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham.U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, said that while Soleimani was “an enemy of the United States,” the killing could put more Americans at risk.“One reason we don’t generally (assassinate) foreign political officials is the belief that such action will get more, not less, Americans killed,” Murphy said on Twitter. “That should be our real, pressing and grave worry tonight.”President Trump is bringing our nation to the brink of an illegal war with Iran with no congressional approval.Passing our bipartisan amendment to prevent unconstitutional war with Iran is urgent. Congress needs to step in immediately. https://t.co/tBFRwQMp51— Tom Udall (@SenatorTomUdall) January 3, 2020Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley praised the move on Twitter.Qassem Soleimani was an arch terrorist with American blood on his hands. His demise should be applauded by all who seek peace and justice. Proud of President Trump for doing the strong and right thing. @realDonaldTrump ??— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) January 3, 2020Mohsen Rezaei, former commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, also took to Twitter, saying that Soleimani “joined his martyred brothers, but we will take vigorous revenge on America,” Rezaei is now the secretary of a powerful state body.Reuters contributed to this report.
…
Turkish Parliament Approves Sending Troops to Libya
Turkey’s parliament has approved a bill that allows troop deployment in Libya to support the internationally recognized government in Tripoli.Turkish lawmakers passed the bill on Thursday with a 315-184 vote.Most opposition parties voted against the bill.The Libyan government, headed by Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj, asked Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for support as it fends off an offensive by General Khalifa Haftar’s forces to the east of the country, which are backed by Russia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan. As VOA’S Zlatica Hoke reports.
…
As 2020 begins, US Presidential Election Race Intensifies
With just a month to go until the Iowa Caucus — the first nominating contest in the U.S. presidential election — the race to choose a Democratic rival to U.S. President Donald Trump is intensifying. The only Latino candidate in the race, former mayor Julian Castro, withdrew Thursday while new fundraising numbers show Senator Bernie Sanders’ candidacy is stronger than expected. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more on the opening of election year 2020.
…
Interpol Officially Wants Fugitive Ex-Auto Executive Ghosn
Interpol has formally asked Lebanon to arrest a fugitive, after the former automobile executive fled from Japan where he was awaiting trial for alleged financial misconduct. Authorities charged him with pouring millions of his employer’s dollars into his own pockets. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi takes us on a mysterious ride currently fueled with more questions than answers.
…
‘Millions of Sparks’: Weather Raises Australia’s Fire Danger
Navy ships plucked hundreds of people from beaches and tens of thousands were urged to flee Friday before hot weather and strong winds in the forecast worsen Australia’s already-devastating wildfires.More than 200 fires were burning, and warnings of extreme danger to come Saturday set in motion one of the largest evacuations in Australian history. Thousands have already fled at-risk coastal areas, creating traffic gridlock in places, and firefighters escorted convoys of evacuees as fires threatened to close roads.Victoria Premier Daniel Andrew declared a disaster across much of the eastern part of the state, allowing the government to order evacuations in an area with as many as 140,000 permanent residents and tens of thousands more vacationers.”If you can leave, you must leave,” Andrews said.A contingent of 39 firefighters from the United States and Canada arrive at Melbourne Airport in Melbourne, Jan. 2, 2020.South Australia state’s Country Fire Service chief officer Mark Jones said the weather conditions were cause for concern because some fires were still burning or smoldering.
“The ignition sources are already there,” he said. “There are millions of sparks out there ready to go if they break containment lines.”The early and devastating start to Australia’s summer wildfires has made this season the worst on record. About 5 million hectares (12.35 million acres) of land have burned, at least 19 people have been killed, and more than 1,400 homes have been destroyed.This week, at least 448 homes have been destroyed on the New South Wales southern coast and dozens were burned in Victoria. Ten deaths have been confirmed in the two states this week, and Victoria authorities also say 28 people are missing. Fires are also burning in Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania.The navy was evacuating hundreds from the Victorian coastal town of Mallacoota, which has been cut off for days by wildfires, forcing as many as 4,000 residents and tourists to shelter on beaches. Landing craft ferried people to the HMAS Choules offshore.Choules Commander Scott Houlihan said 963 people had signed up for evacuation by sea and more had been airlifted to safety.A state of emergency was in place in New South Wales and a total fire ban.Smoke and wildfire rage behind Lake Conjola, Australia, Jan. 2, 2020.State Rural Fire Service deputy commissioner Rob Rogers said strong winds and high temperatures Saturday will make the fire danger worse in many areas and urged those who can flee to do so.”We know people have got a little bit of fire fatigue. They’ve been dealing with this now for months,” Rogers said. “But we need people to stay focused. Tomorrow is not the day to drop your guard. Take it seriously. If you’re in those areas where we put those maps out, do not be there.”Morrison: ‘People are angry’Prime Minister Scott Morrison visited the township of Bairnsdale in Victoria and received a warmer welcome than a day earlier in New South Wales.Morrison cut short a visit to the town of Cobargo when locals yelled at him, made obscene gestures and called him an “idiot” and worse, criticizing him for the lack of equipment to deal with the fires in town.In a radio interview Friday, Morrison said he understood the anger of people affected by the fires.”People are angry and people are raw and people are upset,” he said. “Whether they are angry with me or they are angry about the situation, all I know is they are hurting and it’s my job to be there to try and offer some comfort and support.”Smoke from the wildfires has choked air quality and turned daytime skies to near-nighttime darkness in the worst-hit areas.It’s also blown across the Tasman Sea into New Zealand, where skies are hazy and glaciers have turned a deep caramel brown. The color change may cause more melting since the glaciers will reflect less sunlight.
…
Ex-Trump Aide Manafort Told FBI He Had ‘No Chance at Trial’
Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort said he knew he “had no chance at trial” when he pleaded guilty last year in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, according to a summary of his interview with investigators that was made public Thursday.“When he saw the jury pool questionnaire for the trial (in the District of Columbia), Manafort knew it was over,” an FBI agent wrote in summarizing the interview. “He struck 90 of the 120 potential jurors based on their answers and thought the rest were lying.”Between the judge and the jury, the agent wrote, Manafort thought “he had no chance at trial.” By that point, Manafort had pleaded guilty in Washington’s federal court and been found guilty by a jury in Virginia of similar financial charges. He is now serving more than seven years in prison.Press sues, documents releasedThe write-up of the interview was among hundreds of pages of heavily redacted documents released by the Justice Department in response to public records lawsuits from BuzzFeed News and CNN. It was the third such disclosure of records, all consisting of summaries of interviews that FBI agents and Mueller team members did with key aides and confidants of President Donald Trump.Separately, Manafort made clear that Trump’s distrust of the FBI and the Justice Department long predates his presidency and the investigation into ties between his presidential campaign and Russia.FILE – FBI Director James Comey prepares to testify on Capitol Hill in Washington, May 3, 2017, before the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing: “Oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”Trump and ComeyManafort said Trump believed then-FBI Director James Comey had behaved in a “totally inappropriate” way by holding a news conference to say the FBI would not be recommending charges in the Hillary Clinton email investigation. He said Trump thought Comey was “operating way outside of his space” and the Justice Department shouldn’t have let it happen.“Trump said it was a rigged system and signaled the politicization of the Department of Justice,” the agent wrote. “They talked about how to use it in their campaign, saying that the fix was in between (then-Attorney General) Loretta Lynch and the Clintons.”Manafort said he never expected Trump to keep Comey in the position based on his feelings about his actions during the campaign.“Manafort and Trump had conversations in which they said Comey was a political partisan,” according to the agent’s write-up. “Trump thought it was a joke when people said Comey was a Republican and never viewed him as a Republican. Trump thought Comey had made his bed with the Obama administration and was part of the other team.”Comey was fired in May 2017, and the documents released Thursday include statements from multiple witnesses describing both the lead-up to that the decision and the fallout that happened afterward.FILE – White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller discusses U.S. immigration policy at the daily press briefing at the White House in Washington, Aug. 2, 2017.Behind the scenesTrump aide Stephen Miller, for instance, described working with Trump on a draft letter informing Comey that he was fired. A separate memo was ultimately drafted by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and released by the White House.Former White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told investigators she had no basis for her comment after Comey was fired that countless FBI agents had lost confidence in him.Uttam Dhillon, a former White House lawyer and the current acting administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, told investigators that White House attorneys had warned Trump not to contact Comey directly while he was in his job because “it could create the perception he was interfering with investigations.”He also described how former White House counsel Don McGahn tried to persuade the president to remove from a draft of Comey’s termination letter a reference to Comey having told him three times that he was not under investigation. But, Dhillon said, “it seemed to be the most important part of the letter to the President and he insisted on keeping it in.”Dhillon also told investigators that Trump told him and McGahn that his communications team “could not get the story right” so he was going to do an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt “to say what really happened.” During that interview, Trump said he was thinking of “this Russia thing” when he decided to fire Comey.Also included in Thursday’s disclosure was a write-up of an FBI interview with Jerome Corsi, a conservative who was himself scrutinized during Mueller’s investigation and told reporters he had turned down a plea offer.Corsi suggested to investigators that he had advance knowledge of an infamous “Access Hollywood” recording from 2005 in which Trump can be heard making lewd and profane comments about women. The recording was disclosed by The Washington Post in October 2016.“He remembered the line about Trump ‘grabbing by the genitals’ and being shocked by it. When it came out publicly later that day, Corsi was not shocked by it because he expected it,” the documents say.Corsi told Mueller’s team he believed he mentioned the tape on a World Net Daily conference call Oct. 7, 2016, saying the tape was coming, and sent out a tweet about whether anyone could get to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. But Corsi also said he may have done nothing.
…
Turkish Parliament Sanctions Libya Military Deployment Amid Concerns, Condemnation
A motion sanctioning the deployment of armed forces to Libya easily passed the Turkish Parliament on Thursday, but the specter of Turkish forces entering the Libyan civil war is triggering alarm and condemnation.Passing with a 325-184 vote, the motion gives Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a one-year mandate to send armed forces in support of Libya’s internationally recognized Government of National Accord.
The GNA is currently besieged by Libyan General Khalif Haftar’s military forces, who now control eastern Libya.
Turkish forces becoming involved in the Libya civil war is causing international concern. Following Parliament’s vote, U.S. President Donald Trump spoke with Erdogan by telephone.Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a symposium in Ankara, Turkey, Jan. 2, 2020.”President Trump pointed out that foreign interference is complicating the situation in Libya,” said Hogan Gidley, principal White House deputy press secretary.”Egypt condemns in the strongest terms this step that violates United Nations resolutions,” said an Egyptian Foreign Ministry statement. “The Arab Republic of Egypt also warns of repercussions of any Turkish military intervention in Libya and confirms that this intervention will negatively affect stability in the Mediterranean Sea region.”
Cairo is backing Haftar’s military forces, and previously warned it was ready to deploy its own forces if Ankara went ahead with sending soldiers.’Not intervening in Libya’Ankara dismissed concerns over any Libyan military deployment.”Turkey’s agreement with the Libyan government is the best guarantee for security and stability in the Mediterranean. We will, of course, protect our rights and interests in the Mediterranean,” tweeted Fahrettin Altun, Turkey’s director of communications.”Some countries are trying to put their narrow interests above international peace and security in the Mediterranean. Any agreement struck with a group other than the legitimate government in Tripoli will drag the country further into chaos,” Altun added.During debate over the motion, the Turkish government tried to allay international and domestic concerns.
“We’re not intervening in Libya. We are just meeting a request for help from the internationally recognized government there,” Emrullah Isler, Erdogan’s envoy to the fractured nation, told parliamentary deputies ahead of Thursday’s vote.’Disastrous call’All of the parliamentary opposition parties opposed the motion.Unal Cevikoz, a lawmaker of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, speaks in Ankara, Turkey, Jan. 2, 2020.”This motion does not speak of ‘national security,’ it speaks only of ‘national interest,’ ” Unal Cevikoz of the main opposition CHP Party said during the feisty debate. “It is a disastrous call by the presidential palace to send our citizens to the deserts of Libya.”Opposition deputies also raised concerns over the broad nature of the motion with little information on the type of Libyan military deployment.Ahead of the vote, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar suggested any military action would be confined to training and providing munitions and weapons. Last year, Ankara sent several armed drones in support of the GNA. But while Haftar’s forces, backed by Russian mercenaries, are tightening their control around Tripoli, reports by local Turkish media suggest the GNA may be looking to Ankara to deploy a force of as many as 2,000 combat soldiers.Strategic interestsAccording to observers, Erdogan expedited passage of the motion because of the imminent threat faced by the GNA. Erdogan argues that the GNA’s survival is key to Turkey’s strategic interests.Last November, he signed two agreements with the Libyan government. One was a security agreement in which Ankara pledged military support. The second gave Turkey control of a large swath of the eastern Mediterranean between the two countries.
The region is the center of an increasingly bitter rivalry among regional countries for the search of hydrocarbons. Ankara is alarmed at growing cooperation involving rivals Greece, Israel, Egypt and the Greek Cypriots in the search for and exploitation of the region’s energy.”No plan in the region that excludes Turkey has any chance of success,” Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said Wednesday. Gas pipeline
On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed an agreement in Athens committing his country, Greece and the Greek Cypriot government to building a multibillion-dollar gas pipeline.
The pipeline seeks to exclude Turkey from lucrative transit fees in distributing vast gas reserves discovered off the Israeli coast to Europe. But the route of the planned pipeline passes through the Mediterranean Sea under Turkish control in its agreement with the GNA.Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pose for a photo before signing a deal to build a gas pipeline, in Athens, Greece, Jan. 2, 2020.”These agreements with the GNA are of so much strategic importance for Turkey,” said energy expert and former Turkish Ambassador Mithat Rende. “The strategy of Turkey is to protect its legitimate rights in the eastern Mediterranean. The strategy is to have an equitable solution to the matter, because we have overlapping claims. Turkey made it clear after signing these agreements. Turkey is ready to speak with Greece and other authorities.”Turkey’s strategy of coercing its regional rivals to negotiate is widely seen as increasingly dependent on the survival of the GNA. However, Ankara may yet hold off deploying soldiers to Libya.”Passing the motion in Parliament has a strong political message,” Oktay said. “If they [Haftar’s forces] stop their attacks or withdraw, we may see this as appropriate. But if they keep continuing their attacks, the motion gives us a one-year mandate, so we may deploy our soldiers whenever necessary.”Given that Libya is nearly 2,000 kilometers from Turkey, analysts warn any major military deployment into a combat zone carries considerable risk.
…
US Slaps Sanctions on Cuba Defense Minister over Support for Venezuela’s Maduro
The United States imposed sanctions on Thursday on Cuba’s defense minister, accusing him of human rights violations and supporting socialist Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement.Washington blacklisted Leopoldo Cintra Frias, minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba (MINFAR), and his children, Deborah Cintra Gonzalez and Leopoldo Cintra Gonzalez, in its latest action targeting Havana for its support of Maduro.Pompeo said MINFAR had been involved in the torture of Venezuelans and subjected them to “cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment or punishment for their anti-Maduro stances” alongside Maduro’s military and intelligence officers.The designation bars Cintra, a career military officer who joined Fidel Castro’s rebel army in 1957, and his children from entering the United States.The Cuban Embassy in Washington could not immediately be reached for comment.”As Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba, Cintra Frias bears responsibility for Cuba’s actions to prop up the former Maduro regime in Venezuela,” Pompeo said.”Dismantling Venezuela’s democracy by terrifying Venezuelans into submission is the goal of MINFAR and the Cuban regime,” Pompeo added.The United States and more than 50 other countries have recognized Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as the legitimate president. Guaido invoked the constitution to assume a rival presidency last year, arguing Maduro’s 2018 re-election was a sham.But Maduro retains the support of the military, runs the government’s day-to-day operations and is backed by Russia, China and Cuba.
…
Wanted: Weirdos and Misfits — Aide to UK’s Johnson Is Hiring
The senior adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who plotted Brexit and steered his boss to last month’s election triumph, is on the lookout for “weirdos and misfits with odd skills” to help bring new ideas to Britain’s government.”We want to improve performance and make me much less important” and within a year largely redundant,” Dominic Cummings said in a post on his blog on Thursday.”We do not have the sort of expertise supporting the PM and ministers that is needed. This must change fast so we can properly serve the public.”Cummings, who has made no secret of his disdain for much of the way Britain’s civil service operates, said he had been lucky to have worked with some fantastic officials in recent months.”But there are also some profound problems at the core of how the British state makes decisions,” he said.Cummings was one of the senior campaigners behind the Vote Leave victory in the 2016 Brexit referendum and was described by former Prime Minister John Major as “political anarchist.”In his blog, Cummings said rapid progress could now be made on long-term problems thanks to the combination of policy upheaval after Brexit, an appetite for risk among some officials in the new government and Johnson’s big majority in parliament.The government was looking to hire data scientists and software developers, economists, policy experts, project managers, communication experts and junior researchers as well as “weirdos and misfits with odd skills,” he said.”We need some true wild cards, artists, people who never went to university and fought their way out of an appalling hell hole,” Cummings said.
…
HSBC Kicks Off Year with Hong Kong Branches Closed, Vandalized
HSBC is being drawn into Hong Kong’s political turmoil with protesters attacking some of its branches and graffiti daubed on the famous pair of lions that guard its city-center headquarters.Hong Kong is the bank’s single most important market, accounting for just over half of its $12.5 billion pre-tax profits in the first half of 2019, though with the protests tipping Hong Kong’s economy into recession, HSBC and its peers are expected to take a financial hit.Until now, HSBC had largely escaped direct involvement in the often-violent anti-government protests that have shaken Hong Kong for more than six months even as other companies with perceived links to Beijing have seen premises vandalized, including Bank of China (Hong Kong), Hong Kong’s second largest bank behind HSBC.But more recently, HSBC has drawn the ire of some protesters who accuse it of being complicit in action by the authorities against activists trying to raise money to support their campaign.Police stand guard in front of a vandalized HSBC bank on New Year’s Day in Hong Kong, Jan. 1, 2020.Protesters link the bank’s closure in November of an account held by a group called Spark Alliance, which helps pay protesters’ legal costs, to the December arrest of four Spark Alliance members on money laundering charges. HSBC has strongly denied any connection.”People are angry because they feel that HSBC has stopped money getting to the protesters,” one protester said on Wednesday, of the decision to close the account as he stood in a group taking photos of the damaged lions. HSBC said in a statement after the arrests that the decision to close the account was “in accordance to international regulatory standards.””Our decision is completely unrelated to the Hong Kong Police’s arrest of the four individuals on 19 December 2019. We closed the account in November 2019 following direct instruction from the customer,” the bank said. It is highly unusual for HSBC to comment on individual cases.Two HSBC branches and seven indoor ATM clusters were closed on Thursday, the first working day of the year. Some had their windows smashed and “support Spark Alliance” was spray painted on their walls during a New Year’s Day anti-government protest march. Others were damaged during protests on Christmas Eve. The two lions were daubed with graffiti and briefly set alight after being doused in a flammable liquid. HSBC said on Thursday initial cleaning of the lions had begun.”We are engaging conservation experts to advise us on the professional restoration required and the process can take time,” the bank said in a statement.’Fine line’More than 90% of the $4.4 billion generated by HSBC’s retail banking and wealth management unit in the six months to last June, came from Hong Kong. HSBC has also deployed billions of dollars in China’s southern Pearl River Delta region, adjacent to Hong Kong, and has expanded its services in the world’s second largest economy. Some analysts believe HSBC executives will have to explain their Hong Kong strategy when they discuss annual results on Feb. 18.John Cronin, an analyst with Goodbody, said he expects to hear about a push to grow in other Asian nations, especially emerging markets, as unrest in Hong Kong continues. “Even putting aside the political turmoil in Hong Kong, HSBC’s dependence on Hong Kong for profitability is something I expect that management will seek to tackle,” Cronin told Reuters.Anti-government protesters take part at a lunchtime protest outside HSBC headquarters in Hong Kong, China, Jan. 2, 2020.Beijing plans to integrate the Pearl River Delta and Hong Kong and Macau to create an economic powerhouse under its Greater Bay Area Initiative.HSBC’s entanglement in the protests underlines the tightrope that companies have had to walk since the protests got going in June in response to a now-withdrawn bill that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China, where courts are controlled by the Communist Party.The demonstrations have evolved into a broad pro-democracy movement.”Clearly, there is a fine line for management to draw between customers and the Chinese authorities,” said a head of corporate governance at a UK-based asset manager and HSBC shareholder.Other Hong Kong companies have been damaged by being perceived to be too supportive of the protests.Cathay Pacific Airways was forced by Beijing to suspend staff involved in the protests, and chief executive Rupert Hogg and his top deputy resigned in August amid the turmoil.HSBC has previously been targeted by supporters of Beijing. Users of China’s Weibo social media platform shared screenshots last year of an HSBC employee’s Facebook posts supporting the protests. The posts urged readers to complain to HSBC management.”Businesses now have to consider how three different groups will react to their decisions: The Chinese government, Hong Kong protesters, and Chinese consumers,” said Kent Kedl, head of Control Risks’ Greater China practice.
…
As Jewish Enclaves Spring Up Around NYC, So Does Intolerance
For years, ultra-Orthodox Jewish families priced out of increasingly expensive Brooklyn neighborhoods have been turning to the suburbs, where they have taken advantage of open space and cheaper housing to establish modern-day versions of the European shtetls where their ancestors lived for centuries before the Holocaust. The expansion of Hasidic communities in New York’s Hudson Valley, the Catskills and northern New Jersey has led to predictable sparring over new housing development and local political control. It has also led to flare-ups of rhetoric that some say is cloaked anti-Semitism. Now, a pair of violent attacks on such communities, just weeks apart, worry many that intolerance is boiling over. On December 10, a man and woman killed a police officer and then stormed into a kosher grocery in Jersey City, fatally shooting three people inside before dying in an hourslong gunfight with police. The slayings happened in a neighborhood where Hasidic families had recently been relocating. And on Saturday, a man rushed into a rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York, during a Hanukkah celebration, hacking at people with a machete. Five people were wounded. Federal prosecutors said the man charged in the attack, Grafton Thomas, had written journals containing anti-Semitic comments and a swastika and had researched Adolf Hitler’s hatred of Jews online. Inflammatory rhetoricAt a meeting Monday hosted by U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in Rockland County, where Monsey is, some Jewish leaders said inflammatory rhetoric on social media and from local elected officials had contributed to an atmosphere ripe for anti-Semitic violence. Days after the killings in Jersey City, a local school board member there, Joan Terrell-Paige, assailed Jews as brutes'' on Facebook, saying she believed the killers were trying to send a message with the slaughter.Are we brave enough to explore the answer to their message?she asked. A widely condemned political ad last summer created by a local Republican group claimed that an Orthodox Jewish county legislator wasplotting a takeover” that threatens our way of life.'' Whether any of that heated rhetoric was a factor in the recent violence is unclear, but the legislator targeted in the video ad said that kind of hostile language has repercussions. In the last few years in Rockland County I have seen a rise in hate rhetoric, and I was able to foresee it would end in violence,” said county legislator Aron Wieder. You have seen on social media where the Orthodox community has been called a cancer, leeches, people who don't pay taxes. It has become normal and accepted to say derogatory and hateful things about Jewish people.'' Swastikas have been scrawled around the county, and frightened parents are asking law enforcement for more visible security at synagogues and schools, Wieder said. FILE - Orthodox Jewish children cross a street in Monsey, N.Y. With the rapid growth of Orthodox communities outside New York City has come civic sparring that some fear fueled recent violence in the area.Bigoted messages have gone unchecked for years, said Rabbi Yisroel Kahan, administrative director of the Oizrim Jewish Council. He pointed to hateful comments on social media and false online rumors that have spilled over into everyday life. It has been tolerated for far too long,he said. Hasidic families began migrating from New York City to suburban communities in the 1970s, hoping to create the sort of cohesive community some recalled from Europe. Rockland County, 15 miles (24 kilometers) northwest of Manhattan, now has the largest Jewish population per capita of any U.S. county, with 31%, or 90,000 residents, being Jewish. The ultra-Orthodox population is highly visible in small towns like Monsey, where bearded Hasidic men in black overcoats and fedoras converse in Yiddish along the sidewalks and Orthodox women wear modest black skirts and head scarves as they go about their daily errands. Resentment of newcomersIn small towns everywhere, resentment of newcomers andoutsiders” isn’t uncommon. Proposals for multifamily housing complexes in sleepy communities of single-family homes often trigger fervent opposition complete with lawn signs and rowdy town board meeting crowds. Yet the tone of the debates over growth in some areas where Hasidic families have been moving has been more intense. In East Ramapo, there were legal fights after Hasidic voters, who generally do not send their children to public schools, elected a majority of members of the local school board. Some towns have enacted zoning changes forbidding new houses of worship. In several communities in New Jersey, including Toms River and Jersey City, officials pushed back against an influx of Jewish families by enacting so-called no knock'' ordinances, barring real estate agents representing the Hasidic community from going door to door, offering to buy homes. In the small town of Chester, 60 miles north of New York City in Orange County, New York Attorney General Letitia James recently announced action to fight housing rules that she said were being used to improperly prevent an influx of Hasidic Jews. Local officials have denied anti-Semitism was behind opposition to plans to build over 400 homes in the town of 12,000 residents. Special needsRockland County Executive Ed Day said the arguments over housing density involve legitimate policy issues and are the biggest challenge when it comes to accommodating the growing Orthodox Jewish community. The Orthodox community has special needs, he said, like housing for large families and residences within walking distance to a synagogue. That createsdemands that are counter to many of the communities they’re residing in,Day said. Questionable zoning decisions, he said, lead to resentment. Now the words start. Now the worst words continue. And this is where you have the problem,” Day said. Authorities haven’t offered an explanation yet for what they think motivated the Jersey City attackers and Thomas to select their targets. Thomas’ lawyer and family have said he has struggled for years with mental illness and hadn’t previously shown any animosity to Jews. He had grown up in New York City but was living with his mother in a small town about a 30-minute drive from Monsey. Rabbi David Niederman, executive director of the Brooklyn-based United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg, said he is offended by references to tensions over housing and population growth in discussions about the Monsey and the Jersey City attacks. If you have tensions, what you do is you sit down at a table; that's how you deal with tensions,'' Niederman said.You don’t go out and murder people. You don’t go out with a butcher knife and almost kill a whole congregation.” Those violent attacks, he said, were motivated by pure hatred.
…
Q&A: How Climate Change, Other Factors Stoke Australia Fires
Australia’s unprecedented wildfires are supercharged thanks to climate change, the type of trees catching fire and weather, experts say.And these fires are so extreme that they are triggering their own thunderstorms.Here are a few questions and answers about the science behind the Australian wildfires that so far have burned about 5 million hectares (12.35 million acres), killing at least 17 people and destroying more than 1,400 homes.”They are basically just in a horrific convergence of events,” said Stanford University environmental studies director Chris Field, who chaired an international scientific report on climate change and extreme events. He said this is one of the worst, if not the worst, climate change extreme events he’s seen.”There is something just intrinsically terrifying about these big wildfires. They go on for so long, the sense of hopelessness that they instill,” Field said. “The wildfires are kind of the iconic representation of climate change impacts.”Q: Is climate change really a factor?A: Scientists, both those who study fire and those who study climate, say there’s no doubt man-made global warming has been a big part, but not the only part, of the fires.Last year in Australia was the hottest and driest on record, with the average annual temperature 2.7 degrees (1.5 degrees Celsius) above the 1960 to 1990, average, according to Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology. Temperatures in Australia last month hit 121.8 degrees (49.9 degrees Celsius).”What would have been a bad fire season was made worse by the background drying/warming trend,” Andrew Watkins, head of long-range forecasts at Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, said in an email.Mike Flannigan, a fire scientist at the University of Alberta in Canada, said Australia’s fires are “an example of climate change.”A 2019 Australian government brief report on wildfires and climate change said, “Human-caused climate change has resulted in more dangerous weather conditions for bushfires in recent decades for many regions of Australia.”Q: How does climate change make these fires worse?A: The drier the fuel — trees and plants — the easier it is for fires to start and the hotter and nastier they get, Flannigan said.”It means more fuel is available to burn, which means higher intensity fires, which makes it more difficult — or impossible — to put out,” Flannigan said.The heat makes the fuel drier, so they combine for something called fire weather. And that determines “fuel moisture,” which is crucial for fire spread. The lower the moisture, the more likely Australian fires start and spread from lightning and human-caused ignition, a 2016 study found.There’s been a 10% long-term drying trend in Australia’s southeast and 15% long-term drying trend in the country’s southwest, Watkins said. When added to a degree of warming and a generally southward shift of weather systems, that means a generally drier landscape.Australia’s drought since late 2017 “has been at least the equal of our worst drought in 1902,” Australia’s Watkins said. “It has probably been driven by ocean temperature patterns in the Indian Ocean and the long term drying trend.”Q: Has Australia’s fire season changed?A: Yes. It’s about two to four months longer, starting earlier especially in the south and east, Watkins said.”The fires over the last three months are unprecedented in their timing and severity, started earlier in spring and covered a wider area across many parts of Australia,” said David Karoly, leader of climate change hub at Australia’s National Environmental science Program. “The normal peak fire season is later in summer and we are yet to have that.”Q: Is weather, not just long-term climate, a factor?A: Yes. In September, Antarctica’s sudden stratospheric warming — sort of the southern equivalent of the polar vortex — changed weather conditions so that Australia’s normal weather systems are farther north than usual, Watkins said.That means since mid-October there were persistent strong westerly winds bringing hot dry air from the interior to the coast, making the fire weather even riskier for the coasts.”With such a dry environment, many fires were started by dry lightning events (storms that brought lightning but limited rainfall),” Watkins said.Q: Are people starting these fires? Is it arson?A: It’s too early to tell the precise cause of ignition because the fires are so recent and officials are spending time fighting them, Flannigan said.While people are a big factor in causing fires in Australia, it’s usually accidental, from cars and trucks and power lines, Flannigan said. Usually discarded cigarettes don’t trigger big fires, but when conditions are so dry, they can, he said.Q: Are these fires triggering thunderstorms?A: Yes. It’s an explosive storm called pyrocumulonimbus and it can inject particles as high as 10 miles into the air.During a fire, heat and moisture from the plants are released, even when the fuel is relatively dry. Warm air is less dense than cold air so it rises, releasing the moisture and forming a cloud that lifts and ends up a thunderstorm started by fire. It happens from time to time in Australia and other parts of the world, including Canada, Flannigan said.”These can be deadly, dangerous, erratic and unpredictable,” he said.Q: Are the Australian trees prone to burning?A: Eucalyptus trees are especially flammable, “like gasoline on a tree,” Flannigan said. Chemicals in them make them catch fire easier, spread to the tops of trees and get more intense. Eucalyptus trees were a big factor in 2017 fires in Portugal that killed 66 people, he said.Q: How can you fight these huge Australia fires?A: You don’t. They’re just going to burn in many places until they hit the beach, Flannigan said.
“This level of intensity, direct attack is useless,” Flannigan said. “You just have to get out of the way. … It really is spitting on a campfire. It’s not doing any good.”Q: What’s the long-term fire future look like for Australia?
A: With climate change, not every year will be catastrophic like this year, but “we’re going to see more bad fire years per decade in the future than we have in the past. And the bad fire years can be exceedingly bad,” Flannigan said.
…
Belgian Judge Suspends Warrant for Catalonia’s Puigdemont
The arrest warrant targeting Carles Puigdemont has been suspended by Belgian judicial authorities because of the Catalan separatist leader’s immunity as a European lawmaker, his lawyer said Thursday.Paul Bekaert told The Associated Press that the Belgian judge in charge of the case also suspended the warrant issued against former Catalan cabinet member Toni Comin.The two are wanted in Spain for their role in an illegal 2017 secession bid by the Catalan government and separatist lawmakers. They fled to Belgium after the attempt failed and were elected to the European Parliament in May as representatives of Catalan separatist parties from Spain.Last month the European Union’s top court, the European Court of Justice, overturned a decision preventing Puigdemont and Comin from taking their European Parliament seats. Spain’s state prosecutors’ office, however, asked a Spanish judge to maintain the international arrest warrants for the pair.It was still not clear whether Puigdemont and Comin, whose extradition hearing had already been postponed to Feb. 3, will be allowed to take their seats.”The investigative judge has decided to suspend the procedure of the European warrant following the decision of the European Court of Justice,” Bekaert said. “The European Court has ruled they have immunity.”Belgium’s federal prosecutor’s office did not immediately answer a request for comment.”Belgian justice recognizes our immunity and decides to suspend the arrest and extradition warrant!” Puigdemont said in a message posted on Twitter. “But now we are still waiting for the release of (Oriol Junqueras), who has the same immunity as us. Spain must act in the same way as Belgium has done and respect the law.”The ECJ ruled Dec. 19 that Junqueras, a former Catalan regional vice president serving a prison sentence in Spain for his role in Catalonia’s banned independence referendum, had earned the right to immunity when he was elected as a European lawmaker alongside Puigdemont and Comin.Junqueras was sentenced in October to 13 years in prison for sedition. Eleven of his associates were found guilty and eight of them also received prison terms.
…