Samsung delays Galaxy Fold phone launch over screen problems

Abstract: NEW YORK/SEOUL - Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. said it will delay the retail launch of its Galaxy Fold smartphone for an unspecified period of time after reviewers discovered problems with the display, a hit to the reputation of the world’s largest handset maker. Last week, reviewers started posting problems with the device on Twitter, but as of Friday the company did not know the root cause of the screen defects, according to Patrick Moorhead, founder of Moor Insights & Strategy, who said he was in direct contact with the company. About 50 units of the $1,980 foldable device had been sent for review to journalists, analysts and bloggers in the United States ahead of the launch planned for this Friday, Moorhead said Monday. It was not immediately clear how many of the devices were defective. Four units sent to journalists and a YouTube personality contained problems, according to their posts on Twitter. Samsung declined comment beyond a prepared statement. “To fully evaluate this feedback and run further internal tests, we have decided to delay the release of the Galaxy Fold. We plan to announce the release date in the coming weeks,” a Samsung spokesperson said Monday. Samsung also postponed media events for the device planned for this week in Hong Kong and Shanghai. While Samsung has not said how long the delay could be or whether production of the unit has halted completely, some analysts said the delay is minor compared with the massive recall and production halt that the company endured with its Galaxy Note 7 in 2016. “It’s certainly an embarrassment to Samsung’s reputation, but this won’t have much financial impact on them since they created a whole new category of foldables with this product. There is no market share to lose,” said Moorhead, who added that his test version of the phone was working without any issues. Instead of plaudits ahead of the phone’s planned launch, the South Korean conglomerate has been blighted by a handful of technology journalists reporting breaks, bulges and blinking screens. Samsung said initial findings showed that the issues could be associated with impact on exposed areas of the hinges. It also said there were instances where substances found inside the device affected the display performance. Wayne Lam, an analyst with IHS Markit, predicted the issue will likely be resolved within a month. “We all know that Samsung has a technology that works. It’s likely that this glitch is a problem with mass production and the failure is just in the single digit percentage,” he said. Samsung has hailed the folding design as the future in a field that has seen few surprises since Apple Inc.’s iPhone in 2007. Chinese rival Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. has also announced a folding handset, the Mate X. Samsung was initially planning to begin South Korean and European sales of the unit in May and Chinese sales at an undisclosed date. AT&T, one of Samsung’s U.S. launch partners for the Galaxy Fold, said the carrier is working to communicate with customers who pre-ordered the device as soon as possible. AT&T did not disclose the number of pre-orders.

samsung
apple
iphone
huawei
galaxy note 7
screens
galaxy fold


Tesla says 'robotaxis' coming next year, touts self-driving microchip

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO - Chief Executive Elon Musk said Tesla Inc. “robotaxis” with no human drivers will be available in some markets next year thanks to exponential improvements in technology. “Probably two years from now we’ll make a car with no steering wheels or pedals,” he predicted, while acknowledging he often misses deadlines and his presentation on Monday started 30 minutes late. Musk also unveiled on Monday a microchip for self-driving vehicles that the electric car company hopes will give Tesla an edge over rivals and persuade investors its massive investment in autonomous driving will pay off. The presentation came two days before Tesla is expected to announce a quarterly loss on fewer deliveries of its Model 3 sedan, which represents Tesla’s attempt to become a volume carmaker. Global carmakers, large technology companies and an array of startups are developing self-driving cars — including Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo and Uber Technologies Inc. — but experts say it will be years before the systems are ready for prime time. Musk touted a much faster time frame. “The fundamental message consumers should be taking today: It’s financially insane to buy something other than a Tesla. It’s like buying a horse,” he added, saying Tesla is the only company to have a full self-driving suite of hardware. All Teslas being produced today have the new chip and the company is about halfway through the design process for the next generation chip, which will be about three times better than the current system, Musk said. Tesla has been working on a self-driving chip since 2016 and Musk had previously forecast that cars would be fully self-driving by 2018, a target Tesla has missed. Investors appeared unmoved by the chip announcement, but shares rose slightly in after-hour trading following the announcement of the robotaxis. Musk took a swipe at competitors relying on Lidar, light-based sensors that are a key element in most other self-driving systems. “Lidar is a fools’ errand. And anyone relying on Lidar is doomed,” said Musk, who has been vocal about the technology’s limitations. Tesla vehicles rely on cameras and radar as their vision system for self-driving. Competitors will eventually “dump” Lidar, he said: “It’s expensive and unnecessary and once you’ve solved vision it’s worthless.” More than $1 billion in corporate and private investment has been plowed into some 50 Lidar startups over the past three years, including a record $420 million in 2018, according to a Reuters analysis of publicly available investment data in March. Musk has been the center of most Tesla presentations, but on Monday he ceded the spotlight to his top hardware and software executives. “A year from now we’ll have over a million cars with full self-driving, software, everything,” he predicted. He said it is improbable but true that Tesla has designed the industry’s best self-driving chip, saying Tesla’s is dedicated for autonomous driving, while others, like Nvidia Corp., have developed chips that can do other things as well. Tesla’s chip is capable of seven times as many frames as Nvidia’s Xavier system, said Pete Bannon, Tesla’s head of Autopilot hardware. Teslas have been involved in a handful of crashes, some of them fatal, involving the use of the company’s AutoPilot system, first launched in 2015. The system has automatic steering and cruise control but requires driver attention at the wheel. Tesla has been criticized by safety groups for being unclear about the need for “hands-on” driving. The company also sells a “full self-driving option” for an additional $5,000, explained as “automatic driving from highway on-ramp to off-ramp,” automatic lane changes, the ability to autopark and to summon a parked car. Coming later in 2019 is the ability to recognize traffic lights and stop signs, and perform automatic driving on city streets, Tesla says. But Tesla’s use of the term “full self-driving” still garners criticism, as the option is not yet “Level 4,” or fully autonomous by industry standards, in which the car can handle all aspects of driving in most circumstances with no human intervention.

elon musk
tesla
self-driving cars
lidar
robotaxis


Tokyo stocks end marginally higher

Abstract: Stocks ended a little higher Tuesday, helped by position-adjustment buying prior to the Golden Week holidays that start this Saturday. The Nikkei 225 average gained 41.84 points, or 0.19 percent, to end at 22,259.74, after rising 17.34 points Monday. The Topix, which covers all first-section issues on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, closed 4.35 points, or 0.27 percent, higher at 1,622.97. It added 1.69 points Monday. Both indexes extended their winning streaks to a third session. The Nikkei sank into negative territory briefly due chiefly to selling of clothing store chain Fast Retailing, a weighted component of the index, to lock in profits, market sources said. The index firmed toward the close. On the whole, however, most investors took a wait-and-see stance before the full-fledged earnings season starts in Japan and the United States later this week, the sources said. Stocks were supported by “repurchases and buying backed by hope for higher prices after the holiday,” said Mitsuo Shimizu, chief strategist at Aizawa Securities Co. An official of a bank-affiliated securities firm said Tuesday’s directionless trading was driven by individual players as there were few foreign investors. Tomoaki Fujii, head of the investment research division at Akatsuki Securities Inc., said the market is already in a holiday mood. “Both buying and selling were held in check,” he said. Rising issues outnumbered falling ones 1,234 to 779 in the first section, while 127 issues were unchanged. Volume grew to 995 million shares from Monday’s 869 million. Higher crude oil prices lifted oil companies Inpex, Idemitsu, Japex, Cosmo Energy and JXTG. Also hunted were Daiwa House, air conditioner manufacturer Daikin and drugmaker Shionogi. By contrast, Fast Retailing closed 1.84 percent lower. Nishimatsuya Chain was downbeat the day after the clothing store operator reported sluggish sales for April. Other major losers included Tokai Carbon and daily goods maker Kao.


Dollar nearly unchanged at around ¥111.85 in late Tokyo trading

Abstract: The dollar was nearly unchanged at around ¥111.85 in Tokyo trading late Tuesday as players were paying close attention to upcoming events such as a meeting of the Japanese and U.S. finance ministers. At 5 p.m., the dollar stood at ¥111.85-85, compared with ¥111.89-90 at the same time Monday. The euro was at $1.1245-1245, against $1.1246-1246, and at ¥125.78-78, against ¥125.84-85. Market players “are vigilant over whether a proposed currency clause will be taken up when Finance Minister Taro Aso and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin meet, probably on Thursday, an official at a Japanese bank said. Mnuchin has insisted that such a clause should be included in a proposed trade agreement between Japan and the United States to prevent Tokyo’s competitive currency devaluations. During Tokyo trading hours, the dollar briefly rose above ¥111.90 as the Nikkei 225 stock average swung back into positive territory after earlier weakness. “Selling easily emerged after the dollar approached ¥112” ahead of the 10-day Golden Week holiday period that starts Saturday, an official of another Japanese bank said. The dollar’s downside was also solid because players “aren’t in the phase of selling it actively,” an official at a foreign exchange margin trading service firm said.


Herman Cain declines consideration for Fed seat, Trump says

Abstract: NEW YORK - Herman Cain, facing resistance from his own political party, has withdrawn from consideration for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board, U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday. Four Republican U.S. senators in recent weeks voiced opposition to Trump’s expected nomination of Cain, likely enough to deny the former Republican presidential candidate the support he needed to secure Senate confirmation for the post. Economists and critics have expressed concerns about loyalists of Trump serving on the traditionally nonpartisan U.S. central bank. Cain has been a public advocate of many of Trump’s policies, as has Stephen Moore, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, who Trump has also said he wants to nominate for one of two vacant seats on the seven-member Fed Board of Governors in Washington. Multiple Democrats on Monday renewed calls for Moore to be taken out of consideration. Cain had vowed to fight on in several interviews, and had said he was under attack as a nominee because he is a conservative. Cain’s bid for president in 2012 was derailed by accusations of sexual harassment that recently resurfaced and which he has repeatedly denied. “My friend Herman Cain, a truly wonderful man, has asked me not to nominate him for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board. I will respect his wishes. Herman is a great American who truly loves our Country!” Trump said in a Twitter post. Cain did not respond to a phone call requesting comment on Monday. The top Democrat in the U.S. Senate, Chuck Schumer, said Cain’s “failure to garner adequate support should not be used as a pathway by Senate Republicans to approve Stephen Moore, who is equally unqualified, and perhaps more political.” Schumer said in a statement that Moore “poses a danger to the economic stability of our country” and called on Republicans who have a majority in the Senate to force him out of consideration. Moore did not respond to an email seeking comment. Central bank independence from short-term politics is seen as important to prevent influence that could lead to runaway debt, inflation and financial instability. Trump elevated Jerome Powell to Fed chairman a year ago but has frequently criticized him for the U.S. central bank’s interest rate increases. The central bank’s other top policymakers are drawn from the Fed’s 12 regional banks and chosen by local boards of directors, not the U.S. president. Cain, the former head of the Godfather’s Pizza restaurant chain, served as chairman of the Kansas City Fed’s board in the mid-1990s in a role that also provides the regional bank with input on the local economy. The Fed in March brought a three-year rate-hike cycle to an abrupt end as it abandoned projections for any further rate increases this year.

u.s .
congress
sexual harassment
republicans
federal reserve
donald trump
jerome powell
stephen moore
herman cain


Japan's JTB cancels tours to Sri Lanka through mid-June in wake of Easter terror attacks

Abstract: JTB Corp. said Tuesday it was canceling tours to Sri Lanka departing between Tuesday and June 16 following the Easter terrorist attacks there. The travel agency is unable to sufficiently secure customer safety, an official said. The canceled reservations will be refunded. Coordinated bomb blasts in Sri Lanka on Sunday reportedly killed more than 300 people, including one Japanese national. Rival travel agency H.I.S. Co. said it was continuing tours to the country, noting that it has confirmed that local airports and hotels are able to accommodate travelers. However, cancellation fees will be waived for reservations scheduled to depart by May 10. Both travel agencies have confirmed the safety of customers currently in Sri Lanka, who are expected to return to Japan soon. Japanese tourists to Sri Lanka have been on the rise, with their number topping 47,000 in 2017, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization.

terrorism
sri lanka
tourism
travel agencies
jtb
h.i.s .
sri lanka attacks


Tokyo prosecutors tried to bar Carole Ghosn from husband, citing role as go-between, source says

Abstract: Tokyo prosecutors suspect the wife of former Nissan Motor Co. Chairman Carlos Ghosn has contacted people linked to his case and unsuccessfully tried to bar her from seeing her husband while he is in detention, a source close to the matter said Tuesday. Prosecutors asked the Tokyo District Court to effectively permit only lawyers to see Ghosn, who is currently being held at the Tokyo Detention House for alleged financial misconduct, claiming the former auto tycoon had his wife, Carole, contact the parties involved in his case to ask them to tell the same story as his, the source said. Carole Ghosn may have made the contacts overseas as she traveled to France on April 5, the day after her husband was rearrested in Tokyo, and returned to Japan in time for pretrial questioning by prosecutors on April 11, the source added. The court has rejected the prosecutors’ request to limit Ghosn’s visitors, but their latest allegations could influence the court’s decision on whether to grant bail for Ghosn, who was indicted Monday on a fresh charge of misusing Nissan funds paid to a distributor in Oman. It was his fourth indictment. His lawyers filed a bail request later Monday. Ghosn, who has denied all charges, was initially arrested in November and released on bail in March before being taken back to the detention center in early April. Ghosn is suspected of channeling some of Nissan’s payments to the Omani distributor Suhail Bahwan Automobiles LLC for his personal use, causing the automaker to sustain a $5 million loss. The prosecutors suspect Carole Ghosn may have met officials of the Omani distributor, according to the source. After the court approved bail for Ghosn on March 5 following his more than 100 days in detention, he lived with Carole in a Tokyo apartment until he was arrested for the fourth time on April 4. His bail conditions included a ban from contacting Nissan executives and other people potentially linked to the allegations. But the terms did not ban Carole Ghosn from contacting people potentially involved in his case.

scandals
nissan
carmakers
carlos ghosn
carole ghosn


Renault again proposed merging with Nissan, this time under post-Carlos Ghosn management

Abstract: Renault SA has again proposed a merger with Nissan Motor Co., according to a source close to the matter, a move that could ignite a feud within the alliance just as its new management is beginning to operate after the removal of Carlos Ghosn. Nissan rejected the proposal made in mid-April, the source said late Monday. The French government, Renault’s biggest shareholder, made a similar offer in January after the alliance was rocked by the arrest of Ghosn in November, a source said earlier. Renault is likely to have floated the proposal around the time when the heads of Nissan, Renault and Mitsubishi Motors Corp. held their first meeting of the new management body in Paris on April 12, according to sources. The rejection could jeopardize the recent momentum for improving ties between the two companies. “What’s most important is the future of Nissan. I’ll take the approach of using the alliance for the future in doing my job,” Nissan President Hiroto Saikawa said Tuesday, suggesting a negative perception of the merger proposal. Renault, Nissan’s largest shareholder, is seeking to further solidify its partnership with the Japanese company, which contributes about half of the French automaker’s net profit. But some Nissan executives view the partnership balance as unfair as Nissan has been seeking an equal capital relationship with Renault, sources said. Renault holds a 43.4 percent stake in Nissan, which has a 15 percent stake in the French firm without voting rights. Nissan sold 5.65 million vehicles worldwide last year, 1.5 times more than Renault. The latest proposal comes as the two automakers and Mitsubishi Motors, the third partner in the alliance, launched a new management body in March to steer the world’s second-largest auto group by volume. Renault continues to lead the partnership after Ghosn stepped down, with its chairman, Jean-Dominique Senard, appointed as head of the new body. Senard was initially expected to focus on mending fences with Nissan while setting aside the merger issue. While Nissan and Renault have stressed they will work in a “consultative” manner to strengthen the alliance under the new management team, talk of a possible merger or a review of the capital structure between the two automakers remains a source of tension. In a video message earlier this month, Ghosn, who led Nissan for nearly two decades and was CEO and chairman of Renault, said a “few executives” at Nissan felt threatened about the autonomy of the company due to a possible merger with Renault. Ghosn was initially arrested in November for alleged financial misconduct at Nissan. He was indicted by Tokyo prosecutors for the fourth time on Monday over alleged misuse of Nissan funds for private purposes. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, when asked for a comment on the Nissan-Renault merger proposal at a news conference Tuesday, said he would refrain from speaking about exchanges between private sector companies.

nissan
carmakers
mitsubishi motors
renault
carlos ghosn
mergers
government


U.S. warns terrorists continue to plot Sri Lanka attacks and revises travel advisory

Abstract: WASHINGTON - The U.S. State Department has warned of possible terrorist attacks in a revised travel advisory for Sri Lanka, after a series of deadly blasts killed nearly 300 people — including Americans — in the island nation on Easter Sunday. Sunday’s attacks saw suicide bombers target churches during Easter services and high-end hotels in the capital Colombo. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said “several” Americans were killed — the worst violence to hit Sri Lanka since a long and bloody civil war ended a decade ago. The latest U.S. travel advisory urged “increased caution.” “Terrorist groups continue plotting possible attacks in Sri Lanka,” it said. “Terrorists may attack with little or no warning, targeting tourist locations, transportation hubs, markets/shopping malls” and other public locations like hotels, clubs, restaurants, and places of worship. Travel advisories from other nations like Australia and Ireland also suggest citizens exercise caution while in Sri Lanka. Authorities have said citizens of India, China, Denmark, the Netherlands, Japan, Portugal, Britain, and Turkey died in the attacks. The U.S. Embassy in Colombo said it would remain closed to the public on Monday and Tuesday, but will continue to provide citizen services. There has been no claim of responsibility yet for the attacks, which the White House described as “despicable and senseless.” Security has been ramped up across Sri Lanka as security forces hunt for suspects, with 24 people arrested so far. Wary of sparking ethnic and religious tensions, the government has given few details about those detained. Authorities have said, however, that they are looking into whether the attackers had any “overseas” links. Travel guide book publisher Lonely Planet in October named Sri Lanka as its top destination for 2019, describing it as “the island opening up to new travellers like never before.”

u.s .
terrorism
sri lanka
colombo
mike pompeo
sri lanka attacks


Eastern Libyan forces plan to intensify Tripoli offensive as death toll rises to 254

Abstract: BENGHAZI, LIBYA/TRIPOLI - Eastern Libyan forces said on Monday they would intensify an assault on Tripoli, the capital in the west of the country that is held by the internationally recognized government, as the death toll in a battle now in its third week rose to 254. The Libyan National Army (LNA) force loyal to commander Khalifa Haftar allied to a parallel government in the east has launched an offensive but has been unable to breach the southern defenses of the city. Forces loyal to Tripoli drove back the LNA in recent days the southern suburb of Ain Zara, the main scene of fighting, Reuters reporters visiting the area said, even though the LNA said it had launched airstrikes on military sites in the capital. LNA spokesman Ahmed Mismari denied there had been a retreat but said an advance by his forces had slowed because of the dense population in the areas where fighting was taking place. He told reporters the LNA was calling in reservists to open new fronts on Tripoli and said his army would use artillery and infantry in the next days. He gave no details. Monday was quieter on the main front line south of the capital with less shelling than in previous days, residents said. Bad weather made air strikes impossible, Mismari said. Shelling could be still be heard even in central Tripoli 11 km (7 miles) from the front line and smoke billowed from one spot in southern Tripoli, a Reuters reporter said. The death toll since the start of fighting has reached 254, while 1,228 people have been wounded, the World Health Organization said. More than 32,000 people have been displaced, the U.N. humanitarian agency added. The latest flare-up in Libya, which has been mired in chaos since dictator Moammar Gadhafi was toppled in 2011, threatens to disrupt oil flows, foment migration across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe and allow jihadis to exploit the power vacuum. If a cease-fire was called as demanded by the United Nations, the LNA would have gained a considerable amount of territory, as they still control much of the area south of Tripoli including a forward base in Gharyan, a mountainous town about 80 km (50 miles) south of Tripoli. Fighting over Tripoli has spiked since the White House said President Donald Trump spoke to Haftar on Monday. The disclosure of the call and a U.S. statement that it “recognised Field Marshal Haftar’s significant role in fighting terrorism and securing Libya’s oil resources” has boosted the commander’s supporters and enraged his opponents.

conflict
u.s .
u.n .
libya
tripoli
donald trump
khalifa haftar


U.S. records 71 new measles cases in week as outbreak spreads

Abstract: BANGALORE, INDIA/NEW YORK - The United States recorded 71 new measles cases last week, a 13 percent increase as the country faces its second-worst outbreak of the disease in almost two decades, federal health officials said on Monday. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had recorded 626 cases of the highly contagious and sometimes deadly disease in 22 states as of April 19, the highest rate of infection in five years. The CDC had previously reported 555 cases in 20 states between Jan. 1 and April 11. The current outbreak will likely surpass the 2014 outbreak in number of cases, the CDC said on Monday. Iowa and Tennessee were the two states that joined the CDC list with new measles cases. More than half the cases recorded this year occurred in New York City, primarily in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. The U.S. outbreak is part of a worldwide rise in the once nearly eradicated disease. The World Health Organization reported last week that global cases had risen nearly four-fold in the first quarter of 2019 to 112,163 compared with the same period last year. A vocal fringe of parents in the United States oppose vaccines believing, contrary to scientific evidence, that ingredients in them can cause autism or other disorders.


Trump's EPA chief vows to listen to scientists — sometimes

Abstract: WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency is promising to do a better job heeding the advice of its own scientific advisers — but only to a point. EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler offered the assurance in an eight-page letter to the agency’s Science Advisory Board, after the panel complained the agency was ignoring its own research while unwinding Obama-era environmental rules throttling emissions from automobiles, power plants and oil wells. The advisory board is a panel of nearly four dozen outside researchers and experts tasked with reviewing the technical information used by the EPA, giving advice on broad scientific matters and examining agency research programs. Wheeler said he was directing EPA offices to share information with the expert advisers earlier and to be more transparent “on key regulatory science issues,” by holding “more rapid and frequent briefings.” Wheeler also said he would be asking the board for advice on how the EPA can better tell the public about health and environmental risks. The planned changes should provide “greater support to the vital role the SAB is expected to play in providing scientific advice to the agency,” Wheeler said in the April 19 letter released Monday. Wheeler said the agency will turn to more specialized advisory committees for specific policy recommendations, after previously deciding to disband extra-specialized subcommittees of air quality experts in order to “streamline” their reviews. Wheeler also signaled there were limits to his interest in the SAB’s counsel. EPA decisions “are informed by scientific considerations,” Wheeler said, but ultimately, “the EPA must take account of a wide range of considerations” to ensure its actions are “reasonable, defensible and consistent with our responsibilities to the American people.”

pollution
epa
donald trump
enviromnent
andrew wheeler
science advisory board


After jailing jihadis, Kosovo police quiz several women who returned from Syria

Abstract: PRISTINA - Kosovo police and prosecutors have interrogated several of the women who returned from Syria by plane on Saturday, lawyers who took part in the questioning said on Monday. Kosovo brought back 110 of its citizens from Syria, including 32 women, 74 children and four jihadis who had gone to fight in the country’s civil war. The four fighters were immediately arrested and detained for 30 days awaiting questioning, while women and children were sent to the Foreign Detention Center in the outskirts of Pristina. “I represented a woman who came back from Syria. She is accused for being part of the terrorist groups and she was in very bad health condition,” lawyer Fehmie Gashi-Bytyqi told Reuters. Several visitors were seen in front of the Foreign Detention Center on Monday morning, hoping to see relatives. Children, some small girls wearing hijabs, were outside in the sunny weather playing soccer with police officers. Doctors were constantly entering and leaving the buildings to carry out medical checks on the returnees. Merita Bajraktari, who was among the many female lawyers present, said: “My client is accused of being part of terrorist groups and she is also the wife of another person who was returned to Kosovo on Saturday where he was arrested.” After the collapse of Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq, countries around the world are wrestling with how to handle militants and their families seeking to return. The population of Kosovo is nominally 90 percent Muslim, but largely secular in outlook. More than 300 of its citizens had traveled to Syria since 2012 and 70 men who fought alongside militant groups were killed. Police said 30 Kosovan fighters, 49 women and eight children remain in the conflict zones. The government said it plans to bring back those who are still there. International and local security agencies have previously warned of the risk posed by returning fighters. In 2015, Kosovo adopted a law making fighting in foreign conflicts punishable by up to 15 years in jail.

conflict
terrorism
syria
kosovo
islamic state


Trump says 'nobody disobeys me' when asked if staff defy his orders, as Robert Mueller report claims

Abstract: WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump dismissed questions from reporters on Monday about his staff’s willingness to carry out his orders and the chances of impeachment proceedings in the U.S. Congress, days after the Mueller report highlighted both issues. The 448-page report from U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller on his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election revealed staff and associates sometimes ignored requests from Trump to deliver messages to third parties, including one to fire Mueller. “Nobody disobeys me,” Republican Trump said when asked if he was worried about his orders not being followed. He made the remark at the White House during an annual Easter celebration. Mueller’s report said that the 22-month investigation did not establish that the Trump campaign coordinated with Russians during the 2016 election campaign, but Mueller did find “multiple acts by the president that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations.” Asked whether he was concerned about the threat of impeachment on allegations of obstruction of justice as some Democrats have called for, Trump said, “Not even a little bit.” U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, on Friday said Congress should begin the process of removing Trump from office. Other Democratic leaders have played down talk of impeachment, just 18 months before the 2020 election. Republicans have stood by Trump and while an impeachment effort might succeed in the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, it was unlikely to do so in the Republican-led Senate. Trump, speaking from the White House balcony on Monday, returned to favorite topics of his by touting the strong United States economy and saying his administration was rebuilding the military “to a level never seen before.” “Our country is doing fantastically well, probably the best it has ever done economically,” he said.

u.s .
robert mueller
elizabeth warren
donald trump
russia probe


U.S. appeals court denies Chelsea Manning's bail request, upholds contempt finding

Abstract: WASHINGTON - A federal appeals court denied on Monday a request by former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to be released from jail on bail, and upheld a lower court’s decision to hold Manning in civil contempt for refusing to testify before a grand jury. The ruling marks a blow for Manning, who has been detained since March after she declined to answer questions in connection with the government’s long-running investigation into WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. Neither a spokesman for Manning nor Manning’s attorney could not be immediately reached for comment. Assange was arrested on April 11 at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, after U.S. prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia unsealed a criminal case against him alleging he conspired with Manning to commit computer intrusion. The Justice Department said Assange was arrested under an extradition treaty between the United States and the U.K. The U.S. government alleges that Assange tried to help Manning gain access to a government computer as part of a 2010 leak by WikiLeaks of hundreds of thousands of U.S. military reports about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as American diplomatic communications. It is not clear if the alleged collaboration between Manning and Assange led to a successful intrusion into any U.S. government computer. Assange plans to fight the U.S. extradition request. Such cases, when challenged, can take years before they are resolved. Manning was convicted by court-martial in 2013 of espionage and other offenses for furnishing more than 700,000 documents, videos, diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts to WikiLeaks while she was an intelligence analyst in Iraq. In his last days in office, former U.S. President Barack Obama commuted the final 28 years of Manning’s 35-year sentence. Manning has tried to fight the grand jury subpoena in the Assange case, citing her First, Fourth and Sixth Amendment rights under the Constitution. Her attorneys said among other things that the district court had failed to address her concerns that the government was abusing the grand jury process so it could preview or undermine her testimony as a potential defense witness at a trial. Her lawyers have also argued that the courtroom was improperly sealed during substantial portions of the hearing. But a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit did not agree with those claims. “The court finds no error in the district court’s rulings and affirms its finding of civil contempt,” they wrote.

u.s .
barack obama
julian assange
wikileaks
chelsea manning


Trump can be held accountable without impeachment, Nancy Pelosi tells Congress Democrats

Abstract: WASHINGTON - Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed back on Democrats calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump, even though she said the president “engaged in highly unethical and unscrupulous behavior which does not bring honor to the office he holds.” Responding to calls from some of her members to impeach Trump for acts revealed Thursday in a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, Pelosi said impeachment proceedings are not the only way to uncover the facts needed for Congress to hold Trump “accountable.” Her “Dear Colleague” letter posted on Monday comes before a conference call with House Democrats to discuss her party’s response to the investigation of Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election. Pelosi conceded Democrats don’t all agree on what course they should take following the report’s release last week. “While our views range from proceeding to investigate the findings of the Mueller report or proceeding directly to impeachment, we all firmly agree that we should proceed down a path of finding the truth,” she wrote. The letter reveals the delicate balance Democrats are trying to strike between using their constitutional authority to stop Trump or turning their attention to 2020 elections to deny him re-election. Pelosi, who has been trying to tamp down impeachment talk, also wrote that it is “important to know that the facts regarding holding the president accountable can be gained outside of impeachment hearings.” House Democrats already have launched multiple investigations of Trump, including his associates and businesses. Details from the Mueller report could be folded into those efforts, reinforced by new revelations and amplified by committee hearings and witness testimony. The Judiciary Committee has scheduled a May 2 hearing with Attorney General William Barr and plans to call Mueller to testify. Aside from impeachment, House leaders have suggested some type of censure resolution as another possible outcome of an investigation. “As we proceed to uncover the truth and present additional needed reforms to protect our democracy, we must show the American people we are proceeding free from passion or prejudice, strictly on the presentation of fact,” Pelosi wrote. But these efforts might not be enough for some of the most vocal House Democrats, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives, who have joined their colleagues who already introduced articles of impeachment. They argue that Mueller’s findings of potential obstruction of justice leave it up to the House do its constitutional duty if the president has committed a crime. Two Democratic presidential candidates, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Julian Castro, want the House to consider impeachment. Others worry that overreaching on impeachment could diminish or undercut Democratic efforts on policy issues like health care, violence against women, gun control and the environment that they plan to highlight in the 2020 elections. They argue it is unlikely the Republican-led Senate would convict Trump. But for others, that’s not what is important. To some of them, failure of the House to act on impeachment — regardless of what the Senate might do — would set a dangerous precedent of immunity. “Which means that we will have allowed the president to be above the law,” said Rep. Al Green of Texas, who promises to force a vote on the floor.

u.s .
congress
democrats
impeachment
nancy pelosi
donald trump


Leader of armed group at U.S. border boasted of being trained to assassinate Obama and Clinton, says FBI

Abstract: TAOS, NEW MEXICO/LAS CRUCES NEW MEXICO - The leader of an armed group stopping undocumented migrants who cross into the United States from Mexico had boasted that his members had trained to assassinate former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, an FBI agent said in court papers on Monday. Larry Hopkins was arrested Saturday on a weapons charge. His camouflage-wearing armed United Constitutional Patriots members claim to have helped U.S. officials detain some 5,600 migrants in New Mexico in the last 60 days. The UCP says its two-month presence at the border is intended to support U.S. Border Patrol, which has been overwhelmed by record numbers of Central American families seeking asylum. Critics including the American Civil Liberties Union accuse the UCP of being a “fascist militia” whose members illegally detain and kidnap migrants by impersonating law enforcement. New Mexico’s Democratic governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, on Friday ordered an investigation of the group. She said “menacing or threatening migrant families and asylum-seekers is absolutely unacceptable and must cease.” The FBI in court papers said that while it was investigating allegations of “militia extremist activity” in 2017, witnesses accused Hopkins of saying the UCP was planning to assassinate Obama, former Democratic presidential candidate Clinton and financier George Soros. On Monday, Hopkins appeared in court in Las Cruces, New Mexico, to face charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm. The FBI said it found guns during a 2017 visit to his home. Defense attorney Kelly O’Connell said Hopkins planned to plead not guilty and noted that the charges were unrelated to UCP’s actions at the border. “This is not even dealing with what’s going on right here,” O’Connell said. UCP spokesman Jim Benvie previously said the group was helping the U.S. Border Patrol and publicizing the “border crisis.” He was not immediately available for comment. Crowdfunding sites PayPal and GoFundMe last week barred the group, citing policies not to promote hate or violence, after the ACLU called the UCP a “fascist militia.” FBI Special Agent David Gabriel said in a criminal complaint filed on Monday that in October 2017 the agency received reports a militia was being run out of Hopkins’ home in Flora Vista, New Mexico. When agents entered the home they collected nine firearms, ranging from pistols to rifles, Horton was illegally in possession of as he had at least one prior felony conviction, according to the complaint. The FBI said in court papers that in 2006, Hopkins was convicted of criminal impersonation of a peace officer and felony possession of a firearm, and that in 1996 he was also convicted on a firearms charge. Hopkins, the UCP’s national commander, told the agents that his common-law wife owned the weapons in question, according to court papers. At the time, the FBI had received information that the UCP had around 20 members and was armed with AK-47 rifles and other firearms. “Hopkins also allegedly made the statement that the United Constitutional Patriots were training to assassinate George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama” because it believed that they supported left-wing, anti-fascist protesters, the complaint said. Former state and federal prosecutor David S. Weinstein said Border Patrol’s tacit allowance of the UCP to operate may have allowed it to go beyond what citizens are legally allowed to do. “To the extent where the FBI has got involved, I think it’s escalated to a point where they need to send a stronger message out to them that ‘No, we told you not to do this,’ ” said Weinstein, a partner at the law firm of Hinshaw and Culbertson.

guns
u.s .
barack obama
immigration
hillary clinton
refugees
new mexico
larry hopkins
united constitutional patriots


Candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren proposes scrapping student-loan debt for millions

Abstract: WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren proposed eliminating student-loan debt for an estimated 42 million Americans with a wealth tax, seeking to show young voters she would ease one of their biggest economic burdens. The plan would eliminate as much as $50,000 in student debt for anyone with household income of less than $100,000, and partially cancel debt for those who make as much as $250,000. Beyond $100,000 in income, the $50,000 in per-person debt forgiveness falls by $1 for every $3 earned, zeroing out after $250,000. In other words, those who earn $130,000 are eligible for $40,000 in student debt relief, while those who make $190,000 can lower their loan amount by $20,000. “The enormous student debt burden weighing down our economy isn’t the result of laziness or irresponsibility,” Warren wrote in a blog post published Monday. “It’s the result of a government that has consistently put the interests of the wealthy and well-connected over the interests of working families.” With a university admissions scandal focusing attention on the inequities of U.S. higher education, making college accessible for all is increasingly a campaign theme on the left. Warren’s plan also calls for eliminating undergraduate tuition and fees at two-year and four-year public institutions. Warren’s campaign estimates that her debt cancellation and free-college policies would cost $1.25 trillion over a decade, and called for financing it with a portion of the $2.75 trillion in revenues from her proposed annual tax on wealth of more than $50 million. U.S. student debt topped $1.5 trillion last year, according to the Federal Reserve. Warren’s policy seeks to help millenials weighed down by student debt and to prevent the same fate for the next generation of Americans who’ll become eligible to vote in 2020. Since taking the first step in her presidential bid on New Year’s Eve, Warren has churned out policy blueprints to offer universal child care, break up large technology firms, add housing investments to cut rent costs and slap a surtax on corporate profits. The two-term Democrat’s proposals are highly unlikely to gain the support of President Donald Trump or be considered in Congress while Republicans control the Senate. But with control of the White House and Congress up for grabs in the 2020 election, the question of higher taxes on the rich promises to be a campaign topic. 75 Percent Warren’s policy would fully cancel loans in about three-quarters of households with student debt, according to an estimate provided to the campaign by Arizona State University assistant professor Raphael Charron-Chenier and Brandeis University law professor Thomas Shapiro. The proposal also aims to lower barriers to admission facing black and Latino families, two influential Democratic voting blocs. It calls for expanding Pell Grant funding for non-tuition costs and a fund to assist historically black and minority-serving universities. Universities would be forbidden from considering criminal history or citizenship status when deciding whom to accept.

u.s .
taxes
education
universities
democrats
students
elizabeth warren
donald trump
2020 u.s. presidential election


Trump accepts Queen Elizabeth's invitation for state visit to Britain in June

Abstract: LONDON - U.S. President Donald Trump will pay a state visit to Britain in June as a guest of Queen Elizabeth II, Buckingham Palace said Tuesday. The palace said Trump and his wife, Melania, had accepted an invitation from the queen for a visit that will take place June 3-5. Though many other presidents have visited the monarch, only two — George W. Bush and Barack Obama — were honored with a state visit, which typically features royal pomp including a banquet with the queen at Buckingham Palace. It’s rare for a state visit to be announced just a few weeks before it takes place. Prime Minister Theresa May extended the invitation for a state visit soon after Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, but the trip has been deferred amid concerns about the president’s reception in the U.K. and the extended crisis over Brexit. Trump finally made an official trip to the U.K. last summer, though that was not a state visit. Demonstrators followed him everywhere nonetheless, with tens of thousands flooding the streets of central London to protest his presence and a 20-foot (6-meter) balloon depicting the U.S. president as a screaming baby flown near Parliament. In addition to meeting with the queen, Trump will also sit down with May, whose handling of Brexit he has repeatedly criticized. It has not been announced whether he will address Parliament, an honor granted to presidents including Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. May said in a statement that Britain and the United States “have a deep and enduring partnership that is rooted in our common history and shared interests.” “The state visit is an opportunity to strengthen our already close relationship in areas such as trade, investment, security and defense, and to discuss how we can build on these ties in the years ahead,” she said. Trump and the first lady also plan to attend a ceremony in the naval city of Portsmouth to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings on the final day of his visit, the White House said. Other nations that took part in the campaign to liberate Europe from Nazi Germany have been also been invited to attend. They include Canada, France, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, Luxembourg, Poland, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Greece, and Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Germany has also been invited in keeping with previous D-Day commemorative events. After leaving Britain, Trump and his wife will travel to Normandy, in northern France, as a guest of President Emmanuel Macron to attend D-Day ceremonies at the Normandy American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer. While in France, Trump will also meet separately with Macron.

u.s .
u.k .
queen elizabeth ii
donald trump
state visits


Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Seth Moulton jumps into crowded 2020 campaign

Abstract: WASHINGTON - Rep. Seth Moulton, an Iraq War veteran and leading rebel against House Democratic leadership, announced Monday he’s mounting a campaign for president, joining a crowd of 18 other Democrats who want to challenge President Donald Trump in 2020. “I’m running because we have to beat Donald Trump,” Moulton said a video on Twitter. “And I want us to beat Donald Trump because I love this country.” Moulton’s first task will be to distinguish himself from a collection of candidates with wider name recognition and established political organizations who have already been raising money, collecting endorsements and hiring staff in early primary and caucus states. Still more candidates are expected to join the race in the coming weeks, including former Vice President Joe Biden. The Democratic field spans an ideological range from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who describes himself as a democratic socialist, to Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who’s running as a middle-of-the-road pragmatist. Moulton calls himself a progressive Democrat and rarely breaks ranks with the party on key votes. He’s a member of the House New Democrat Coalition, a bloc of lawmakers who say they are dedicated to fiscally responsible, pro-growth policies. Leading up to his announcement, Moulton unveiled proposals on voting rights and changes to the electoral system. He called for abolishing the 60-vote threshold required to pass legislation in the Senate and jettisoning the electoral college system used to elect presidents, proposals that several other Democratic presidential candidates have embraced. “To change the country, we need to fundamentally change how government works: We need to abolish the filibuster and the electoral college,” Moulton wrote in a March 12 op-ed in the Washington Post. Moulton, 40, gained some prominence in recent years for challenging Democratic leadership in the House, saying it’s time for a new generation to replace Nancy Pelosi and her top lieutenants, who’ve been in power for more than a decade. In 2018 he led a group of rebel Democrats who withheld support for Pelosi’s speaker bid until she agreed to limit her own term. That push followed a midterm election in which Democrats won back control of the House, despite Republican attempts to tie the party’s candidates in swing districts to what they called Pelosi’s liberal agenda. Moulton’s challenge to Pelosi was unsuccessful, and it was unpopular with some Democrats who argued that trying to topple the first woman to hold the speaker’s gavel sent the wrong message at a time when female voters and candidates were vital to the party’s success in the midterm elections. Moulton, who worked to recruit military veterans as Democratic candidates in the 2018 midterm elections, is one of three presidential hopefuls who has served in the armed forces, along with Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Moulton joined the Marine Corps in late 2001, after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack and shortly after graduating from Harvard. Moulton says he was an opponent of the Iraq war, but he went on to serve four tours in the conflict over five years. Moulton was in the first company of Marines to enter Baghdad, serving under Gen. James Mattis, who became Trump’s first defense secretary. “A lot of Americans are feeling betrayed by Washington the same way we did in Iraq,” Moulton said in his campaign video. “Ask anyone who’s lost their job in a changing economy or a child to opioids or has to choose between heat and food in the winter. They’re feeling forgotten.” After leaving the Marines, he earned degrees in business and government from Harvard Business School and the Kennedy School of Government. In 2014, Moulton challenged nine-term Rep. John Tierney in the Democratic primary for his Salem district — his first clash with Pelosi, who campaigned vigorously for the incumbent. Moulton won the primary with 51 percent of the vote, then beat his Republican general election opponent by 14 points.

democrats
nancy pelosi
donald trump
2020 u.s. presidential election
seth moulton


Iran says it's ready for U.S. waivers to end as Revolutionary Guard threaten to shut Hormuz

Abstract: DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES - Tehran is prepared for a U.S. decision to end waivers granted to buyers of Iranian crude, an Iranian oil ministry source said on Monday, as the Revolutionary Guards repeated their threat to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz, Iranian media reported. The United States will fail to cut Iranian oil exports to zero, the semi-official Tasnim news agency on Monday quoted an unnamed Iranian oil ministry source as saying. U.S. President Donald Trump has decided not to reissue waivers in May allowing importers to buy Iranian oil without facing U.S. sanctions, the White House said in a statement on Monday. Separately, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ navy said Iran would close the Strait if Tehran is barred from using it. “According to international law, the Strait of Hormuz is a marine passageway and if we are barred from using it, we will shut it down,” the semi-official news agency Fars quoted Gen. Alireza Tangsiri as saying on Monday. “In case of any threat, we will have not even an iota of doubt to protect and defend the Iranian waters,” Tangsiri added. Tasnim quoted the unnamed source as saying: “Whether the waivers continue or not, Iran’s oil exports will not be zero under any circumstances unless Iranian authorities decide to stop oil exports … and this is not relevant now.” “We have been monitoring and analyzing all possible scenarios and conditions for the advance of our country’s oil exports, and necessary measures have been taken … Iran is not waiting for America’s decision or the lack of it to export its oil,” Tasnim quoted the source as saying. “We have years of experience in neutralizing efforts by enemies to strike blows against our country,” the source added. Iran has threatened to disrupt oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, a major oil shipment channel in the Gulf, if the United States tries to strangle Tehran’s economy by halting its oil exports.

oil
iran
sanctions
revolutionary guard
strait of hormuz
donald trump


West scrambles to talk to Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskiy, hoping he can be bulwark against Putin

Abstract: BRUSSELS - The European Union scrambled to get a call with Ukraine’s president-elect, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on Monday as Western powers wondered whether the TV comic would heed their urgings to stick with reforms that they hope can anchor the country beyond the grip of Russia. EU institutional leaders Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker wrote jointly to congratulate the 41-year-old political novice on an easy win over Petro Poroshenko, for five years the West’s champion in Kiev. But they also stressed that they are counting on more democratic reforms and fighting corruption. Highlighting Sunday’s smoothly run vote as a “major achievement” after five years in which the EU has pumped cash into Ukraine and borne the cost of economic sanctions on Moscow, the respective presidents of the European Council and Commission urged Zelenskiy to seek continuity. “Much remains to be accomplished to fully realise the peaceful, democratic and prosperous Ukraine that its citizens have called for,” Tusk and Juncker wrote. “You can count on the EU’s strong support to Ukraine’s reform path, including consolidating the rule of law, fighting corruption, maintaining macrofinancial stability and pursuing the essential reform of the energy sector.” With Europe and North America taking an Easter holiday, there was little other comment on the second-round vote result that had been widely forecast by recent opinion polls. Diplomats and officials in Brussels working with both the European Union and NATO said Zelenskiy was still very much an unknown quantity for Western governments. “Very few from the European elite — if any — know him,” said a senior EU diplomat in Brussels. Another called Zelenskiy’s task “quite challenging” in managing appointments and parliamentary elections, as well as in his relations with billionaire power-brokers. Those included Ihor Kolomoisky, owner of the TV channel that broadcasts his show. However, the diplomat said he felt some “cautious optimism. EU officials had been quietly in contact with people close to Zelenskiy since he romped home ahead of Poroshenko in the first round, EU sources told Reuters. Tusk and Juncker proposed a meeting as soon as possible and officials were trying to set up phone contact within the coming hours. There were also tentative plans for a formal EU-Ukraine summit in July. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a letter to the president-elect, who is expected to take office next month, that she looked forward to hosting him for talks in Berlin soon. “The German government will also in the future continue to support Ukraine’s right to sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Merkel wrote. The European Union has invested heavily, in both economic and political terms, in Ukraine, seeing it as a potential model for other post-communist neighbors and a bulwark against a Russia seen as a growing threat, especially by the EU member states that spent decades under the control of Moscow. But the 28-member bloc has also grown frustrated with continued corruption and democratic failings in Ukraine. One senior EU official told Reuters: “We see the process as a win for Ukrainian democracy and we are eager to work with him (Zelenskiy) on reforms. But he remains an unknown quantity. “We need to get him on the phone, set up meetings, get our message across about the seriousness of the need for reforms and our support but only on the basis of reforms. Clearly it’s a rebuke to Poroshenko, but the same reforms of the economy, against corruption are still crucial.” A second senior EU official also stressed that Brussels saw Zelenskiy as having benefited from disappointment with Poroshenko. And while contacts during the campaign meant that Zelenskiy was not a total unknown to at least some EU officials, the official conceded that “we don’t have a very clear idea of his ideas beyond what he has said in the campaign. Those campaign statements included maintaining a broadly pro-Western course, though Zelenskiy said rather less than Poroshenko about one day joining the EU and NATO — neither of which particularly appeal to Western states. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg tweeted his congratulations, adding cautiously: “Ukraine is a valued NATO partner and we look forward to continuing our cooperation.” A European diplomat working with NATO in Brussels said: “We congratulate him — but we will need to analyze who he is.” Tusk and Juncker said further implementing Kiev’s trade and political pact with the EU could provide “crucial” help. That deal, seen by the Kremlin as shifting the biggest of its Soviet-era satellites toward the West, was a factor in the events that culminated with pro-EU leaders installed in Kiev, Russia’s seizure of the Crimea peninsula in 2014 and pro-Kremlin separatists taking over Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine.

russia
nato
eu
angela merkel
ukraine
petro poroshenko
volodymyr zelenskiy


Yemen's Houthis say Saudis and UAE are in missile range if Hodeida truce fails

Abstract: DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES - Yemen’s Houthi forces have missiles that could be fired at Riyadh, Dubai and Abu Dhabi should violence escalate in the main Yemeni port city of Hodeida, where a fragile cease-fire is now in place, the leader of the Houthi movement said on Monday. Yemen’s four-year war pits the Iran-aligned Houthis against the internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, which is backed by a Saudi-led coalition of Yemeni and Arab forces, which include the United Arab Emirates. “Our missiles are capable of reaching Riyadh and beyond Riyadh, to Dubai and Abu Dhabi,” Abdul Malik al-Houthi told Houthi-run Masirah TV. “It is possible to target strategic, vital, sensitive and influential targets in the event of any escalation in Hodeida,” he said. “We are able to strongly shake the Emirati economy.” Houthi forces regularly fire missiles into southern Saudi Arabia and occasionally aim for targets such as the capital Riyadh or facilities of state oil company Saudi Aramco. Most missiles have been intercepted by the Saudi military. Hodeida port is the entry point for most of Yemen’s humanitarian aid and commercial imports. It is the current focal point of U.N. efforts to implement a December deal between warring parties. The United Nations is trying to get both sides to pull troops out of Hodeida but the process has stalled. Both sides blame the other for lack of progress. Although a cease-fire largely holds in Hodeida, violence continues elsewhere and has escalated in recent weeks. Plagued by decades of instability, Yemen’s latest conflict began in late 2014 when Houthi forces drove Hadi’s government out of the capital Sanaa. The Saudi-backed alliance intervened in March 2015 to restore Hadi’s government. The Houthis, who say their revolution is against corruption, control Sanaa and most population centers.

conflict
yemen
saudi arabia
missiles
uae
houthis
hodeida


Iran and Pakistan to form joint rapid reaction force at border, says Rouhani

Abstract: GENEVA - Iran and Pakistan will form a joint quick reaction force to combat militant activity on their shared border, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Monday during a televised press conference with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan. Khan arrived in Iran on Sunday to discuss security and regional issues, Iranian state TV reported, a day after Islamabad urged Tehran to act against militants behind killings in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province. Relations between Iran and Pakistan have been strained in recent months, with both sides accusing each other of not doing enough to stamp out militants allegedly sheltering across the border. “We agreed to increase the security cooperation of the two countries, our border forces, our intelligence forces,” Rouhani said during the conference, which was broadcast live on state TV. “And also to form a joint quick reaction force on the border of the two countries for fighting terrorism.” Khan said that militant activity at the border could be a source of tension. “The most important reason why I’m here, Mr. President, is because I felt that the issue of terrorism was going to … increase differences between our countries,” Khan said during the joint press conference. “So it was very important for me to come here and come with our security chief that we resolve this issue.” A new umbrella group representing various insurgent groups operating in Baluchistan claimed responsibility for an attack on Thursday when 14 passengers were killed after being kidnapped from buses in the province, which borders Iran. Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said on Saturday the training and logistical camps of the new alliance that carried out the attack were based inside Iran and called on Iran to take action against the insurgents. Shiite Muslim Iran says militant groups operate from safe havens in Pakistan and has repeatedly called on Islamabad to crack down on them. Tehran has stepped up security along its long border with Pakistan after a suicide bomber killed 27 members of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards in mid-February in southeastern Iran, with Iranian officials saying the attackers were based inside Pakistan. The Sunni group Jaish al Adl (Army of Justice), which says it seeks greater rights and better living conditions for the ethnic Baloch minority, claimed responsibility for that attack. Separately, Rouhani said during the joint press conference that the Islamic Republic is ready to help with Pakistan’s oil and gas needs.

pakistan
terrorism
iran
imran khan
hassan rouhani


More than 50 feared killed in landslide at Myanmar jade mine

Abstract: YANGON - More than 50 people are feared killed after a landslide in northern Myanmar engulfed jade miners while they were sleeping, local police said Tuesday, the latest deadly accident in a notoriously dangerous industry. Dozens die each year in landslides caused by jade mining, a corrupt and poorly regulated industry concentrated near the country’s border with China. Local police described a freak accident in Kachin state on Monday night so big it created a huge “mud lake” that buried the miners as well as some 40 vehicles. “Fifty-four people are missing in the mud,” a duty officer from Hpakant township police station said, asking not to be named, adding that only two bodies had been recovered so far. “There’s no way they (the missing) could have survived.” The Ministry of Information confirmed the accident and number of missing, adding that the area was mined by Myanmar Thura Gems and Shwe Nagar Koe Kaung companies. Myanmar Thura Gems director Hla Soe Oo said by phone he was en route to the site but did not have further details. Local media shared images, unverified by AFP, that showed the walls of a mine stretching vertically a couple of hundred meters above a vast pool of mud, revealing only the tops of two yellow excavation vehicles. Hundreds of onlookers gathered nearby, staring at the disaster site and taking photos with their phones. Fatal landslides are common in the mines with victims often from impoverished ethnic communities looking for scraps left behind by big firms. A major landslide in November 2015 left more than 100 dead. The jade industry is largely driven by an insatiable demand from neighboring China. Watchdog Global Witness estimated that it was worth some $31 billion in 2014, although very little reaches state coffers. Northern Myanmar’s abundant natural resources — including jade, timber, gold and amber — help finance both sides of a decadeslong civil war between ethnic Kachin insurgents and the military. The fight to control the mines and the revenues they bring frequently traps local civilians in the middle. A 17-year cease-fire broke down in 2011 and since then more than 100,000 people have been displaced by fighting. On coming to power in 2016, civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi promised to make the peace process with the country’s myriad armed groups her top priority — a pledge that has yet to yield significant results.


Kim Jong Un woos Vladimir Putin as North Korean laborers toil in Russia

Abstract: SEOUL - While North Korean leader Kim Jong Un wines and dines with Vladimir Putin in Russia this week, around 10,000 of his citizens will be laboring around the country to earn money for his government. Analysts say Kim is looking to strengthen economic links with Moscow with his nuclear negotiations with Washington deadlocked and as he seeks a counterbalance to Beijing, currently Pyongyang’s key major ally and vital economic lifeline. The pair are expected to meet in the eastern Russian port of Vladivostok, possibly on Wednesday or Thursday, in the first summit between the leaders of North Korea and Russia since Kim Jong Il met with Dmitry Medvedev eight years ago. Labor is one of the North’s key exports and sources of cash. It provides workers under contracts with overseas entities, and rights groups say that the government seizes most of their salaries. Their treatment “falls short of international labor standards,” Human Rights Watch said in a 2017 report, “with no right to freedom of association or expression, control by minders who limit freedom of movement and access to information from the outside world, long working hours and no right to refuse overtime.” Nonetheless some specialists say the assignments are sought after by North Koreans, as once they have fulfilled their duties they have a chance to earn money for themselves. Russia is Pyongyang’s second-biggest customer after China, according to the U.N., with North Koreans working in mining, logging, textiles and construction, many of them in the country’s far east. Elsewhere, others toil in the Middle East. The situation gives Kim and Putin a shared interest in easing the United Nations Security Council sanctions imposed on the North over its banned nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Under UNSC Resolution 2397, approved in December 2017, “Member States shall repatriate to the DPRK all DPRK nationals earning income in that Member State’s jurisdiction … no later than 24 months from the date of adoption of this resolution.” In a submission to U.N. sanctions officials, Russia said the number of North Koreans with valid work permits in the country had fallen by nearly two-thirds in 2018, from just over 30,000 to 11,490. Last week, Pyongyang officials asked Moscow to continue to employ North Korean workers even after the deadline, specialist outlet NK News reported. A U.N. report said Russian-based firms were continuing ship-to-ship transfers of oil with North Korean vessels, one of the ways Pyongyang seeks to circumvent restrictions on oil. Russia has already called for sanctions to be eased and Ahn Chan-il, a North Korean defector and researcher in Seoul, said: “Moscow probably has long-term plans and goals. “What’s most important is having full access to the North’s cheap labor, on top of its mineral resources, if ever the existing sanctions are lifted and the North reduces the size of its army thereafter.” Immediate sanctions relief was a major demand of the cash-strapped North when Kim met U.S. President Donald Trump in February for a second summit that ultimately broke down in disagreement over what Pyongyang was prepared to give up in return. North Korea, which holds most of the peninsula’s raw material reserves, was once wealthier than the South, but decades of mismanagement and the demise of its former paymaster the Soviet Union have left it deeply impoverished. China is by far its biggest business partner, accounting for more than 90 percent of its trade according to estimates. North Korean physical exports to Russia were worth just $1.98 million last year, according to International Trade Centre statistics, with musical instruments representing more than 70 percent of it. In the other direction, the North imported $21.6 million worth of mineral fuels and oil from Russia, out of $32.1 million of total imports. But before the U.N. started to impose broader sectoral sanctions on the North in 2017, targeting its mineral and foodstuff exports and textile trade, Pyongyang and Moscow had been pursuing a number of joint economic projects. They included restoring and expanding the 54-kilometer railway between the North Korean port of Rajin and Khasan in Russia. Russia already exports coal by sea to China via Rajin — a business that is specifically exempted from U.N. sanctions. Moscow has long had its eye on shipping more of its vast hydrocarbon reserves via the Korean peninsula to China and the energy-hungry but resource-poor economies of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. In 2011, Kim’s father Kim Jong Il traveled to Siberia and discussed gas pipeline and power line projects with then-Russian president Dmitry Medvedev. Kim died three months after the trip, and no significant progress has been made on the projects. “Russia is in no hurry,” said analyst Ahn. “But it is also well aware that if an inter-Korean railway is built and it also somehow gets connected to Russia, they know it will bring development to its underpopulated regions such as Siberia.”

north korea
vladimir putin
russia
rights
kim jong un
u.n .
sanctions
slavery


North Korea's Kim to meet Putin in Vladivostok on Thursday: Kremlin aide

Abstract: MOSCOW - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in the eastern Russian city of Vladivostok on Thursday, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters on Tuesday. The leaders will discuss political and diplomatic efforts to settle the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula, and Kim’s visit is key in this process, Ushakov said. He said Russia’s bilateral trade with North Korea fell by more than 56 percent last year because of sanctions against Pyongyang but Moscow thinks it is important that North Korea and the United States are interested in maintaining their contact.

north korea
vladimir putin
russia
kim jong un


20 years on, Falun Gong survives underground in China

Abstract: BEIJING - Sitting lotus-style on an apartment floor, two women quietly rotate their arms in front of them — a rare sight in China, where displays of Falun Gong meditation have all but disappeared from public view. The spiritual movement now is a shadow of its heyday in China, where the group once boasted more than 70 million followers before it was outlawed in 1999 giving police carte blanche to persecute members. But 20 years on, the group has remained stubbornly persistent, even as practitioners in mainland China continue to face arrests and torture, according to rights groups. Before the crackdown, Falun Gong members would congregate in parks in large numbers to practice qi gong meditation. Now they do their slow movement exercises behind closed doors. “It doesn’t matter how the Communist Party suppresses (Falun Gong), I don’t think about it too much,” said one of the women, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic. “I just do what I want to do,” she said. Falun Gong, which emphasizes moral teachings, was once encouraged by Chinese authorities to ease the burden on a creaky health system after it was unveiled in 1992 by Li Hongzhi, who emigrated to the U.S. four years later. But after over 10,000 Falun Gong members surrounded Communist Party headquarters in central Beijing on April 25, 1999, to protest the detention of some of their members, the government responded with a crackdown. Then-president Jiang Zemin issued orders to eliminate the group, which was later declared an “evil cult” — a tactic to justify repression, scholars say. Top officials “see Falun Gong, first and foremost, as an ideological and political threat,” said Maria Cheung, a University of Manitoba professor who has researched the movement. The demonstration had been the biggest protest in Beijing since the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy sit-in in 1989. Following the protest, Chinese authorities launched a special security bureau known as the “610 office” to suppress and monitor Falun Gong followers. Practitioners and rights groups have also reported deaths, torture, and abuse at labor camps. One woman from northern China recounted a traumatic period when her father was pressured by local authorities to beat his younger sister, who was a “very resolute practitioner of Falun Gong.” He was “forced to break his own flesh and blood, resulting in my aunt hating her own brother for many years,” she told AFP, shuddering with tears. David Ownby, a history professor at the University of Montreal who has studied Falun Gong, said cults emerge in China because the officially atheist state has successfully kept traditional religions weak. “That means that part of the market is open to groups that are not sanctioned,” he said. “That is the basic paradox at the heart of the religion policy.” One Falun Gong follower in China, who joined in 2010, said her dissatisfaction with society and family life turned her towards the spiritual movement. “I thought that maybe a bit of (religious) faith would make me better,” she said, adding that she had also been exposed to Buddhism. While Falun Gong survives underground in mainland China it has swelled among the Chinese diaspora, as followers have fled overseas in search of asylum. Falun Gong is practiced in over 70 countries, according to Falun Dafa Info Center, the group’s press office. The movement has also turned “hard-edged” over the years, said Ownby, with some academics reporting harassment for calling Falun Gong a sect or cult. Levi Browde, the center’s executive director, said he believes if harassment has occurred, it is simply an effort by Falun Gong practitioners “to provide more information to the scholars.” It is about “making sure we’re not adding momentum to the wave of violence and death that engulfs the lives of Falun Gong practitioners throughout China,” he said. The spiritual movement has also adopted a more political stance in some parts of the world. In Hong Kong, where Falun Gong activists hand out flyers and try to talk to people — especially mainland tourists — the movement has taken on a stridently anti-communist tone. One key slogan, seen on banners and blared through loudspeakers is: “The heavens will destroy the Chinese Communist Party.” Zhang Yucheng, a 76-year-old Falun Gong member who distributes the anti-communism newspaper The Epoch Times to passers-by in Hong Kong, said he did not join the spiritual movement to be a dissident. “I was a Chinese Communist Party member,” he said. But when the party decided to “fight against Falun Gong and started to tell lies,” he felt he was left with no choice. “If one continues to tell the truth, they will end up like me, expelled from the party,” Zhang added. Beijing’s efforts to eliminate Falun Gong and other groups it deems heretical show no sign of abating, with dedicated “cult prevention and handling” departments active around the country. More than 900 Falun Gong followers were sentenced to prison between January 2013 and June 2016, according to a 2017 report by U.S.-based Freedom House. This year, posters appeared on public walls in Beijing warning people against cults, with the message: “wipe your eyes and stay awake.” The government is “calm on the surface but controlling underneath” said the Falun Gong follower from northern China. “I don’t think they have loosened up.” “Whether it’s wire-tapping or contacting you time and again,” she said, “they still want to control.”

china
human rights
religious freedom
falungong


Rift with president kept Sri Lanka PM in dark about intel of looming Easter attack, says minister

Abstract: COLOMBO - A rift between Sri Lanka’s president and prime minister that sparked a crisis last year came under scrutiny on Monday a day after a series of deadly bomb blasts, with questions over how the government handled a recent warning of an attack. The prime minister has been kept out of intelligence briefings since he fell out with the president, a government minister said, a day after Easter attacks on churches and hotels killed 290 people and wounded nearly 500. Police had been warned this month about a possible attack on churches by a little-known domestic Islamist group, according to a document seen by Reuters. But Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe had not been told of the report, dated April 11, that said a foreign intelligence agency had warned of attacks on churches by a domestic militant group called the National Thawheed Jama’ut, Health Minister Rajith Senaratne told reporters. It was not immediately clear what action, if any, was taken in response to the tip-off. “When we asked about the intelligence report, the prime minister was not aware of this,” said Senaratne, who also briefs reporters on the deliberations of the Cabinet. It was not clear if the president, Maithripala Sirisena, was aware of the report but the top security organization, the Security Council, reports to him, while the prime minister was no longer invited to council meetings because of the rift, Senaratne said. The president was out of the country when the bombers struck. His office declined comment. “As a government we have to say very, very sorry and we have to apologise to the families and their institutions about this incident,” said Senaratne. The president fired Wickremesinghe last October over political differences, only to reinstate him weeks later under pressure from the Supreme Court. Their relationship has not improved and their differences have delayed government decisions, politicians say. On Sunday, with the president on a foreign trip and the country shaken by the suicide attacks, Wickremesinghe called a Security Council meeting but its members failed to show up, Senaratne said. “This is the first time in history we have seen that the Security Council refused to come for a meeting with the country’s prime minister,” he said. On Monday, Wickremesinghe attended a council meeting called by Sirisena after his return. It was the prime minister’s first council meeting since the political crisis, his office said. Senaratne said security forces had raided training sites of the National Thawheed Jama’ut. The government also believed there were international links to the attacks. “We don’t think a small organization can do all that. We are now investigating international support for them and their other links — how they produced the suicide bombers and bombs like this,” he said.

christianity
terrorism
islam
sri lanka
ranil wickremesinghe
national thawheed jama'ut
rajith senaratne
sri lanka attacks


China plastic waste ban throws global recycling into chaos

Abstract: JENJAROM, MALAYSIA - From grubby packaging engulfing small Southeast Asian communities to waste piling up in plants from the U.S. to Australia, China’s ban on accepting the world’s used plastic has plunged global recycling into turmoil. For many years, China received the bulk of scrap plastic from around the world, processing much of it into a higher quality material that could be used by manufacturers. But at the start of 2018, it closed its doors to almost all foreign plastic waste, as well as many other recyclables, in a push to protect the local environment and air quality, leaving developed nations struggling to find places to send their waste. “It was like an earthquake,” said Arnaud Brunet, director general of Brussels-based industry group The Bureau of International Recycling. “China was the biggest market for recyclables. It created a major shock in the global market.” Instead, plastic is being redirected in huge quantities to Southeast Asia, where Chinese recyclers have shifted en masse. With a large Chinese-speaking minority, Malaysia was a top choice for Chinese recyclers looking to relocate, and official data showed plastic imports tripled from 2016 levels to 870,000 tons last year. In the small town of Jenjarom, not far from Kuala Lumpur, plastic processing plants suddenly appeared in large numbers, pumping out noxious fumes day and night. Huge mounds of plastic waste, dumped in the open, piled up as recyclers struggled to cope with the influx of packaging from everyday goods, such as foods and laundry detergents, from as far afield as Germany, the United States, and Brazil. Residents soon noticed the acrid stench over the town — the kind of odor that is usual in processing plastic, but environmental campaigners believe some of the fumes also come from the incineration of plastic waste that was too low quality to recycle. “People were attacked by toxic fumes, waking them up at night. Many were coughing a lot,” said 47-year-old resident Pua Lay Peng. “I could not sleep, I could not rest, I always felt fatigued.” Pua and other community members began investigating and by mid-2018 had located about 40 suspected processing plants, many of which appeared to be operating secretly and without proper permits. Initial complaints to authorities went nowhere, but they kept up pressure, and eventually the government took action. Authorities started closing down illegal factories in Jenjarom and announced a nationwide temporary freeze on plastic import permits. Thirty-three factories were closed down, although activists believe many have quietly moved elsewhere in the country. Residents say air quality has improved but some plastic dumps remain. In Australia, Europe and the U.S., many of those collecting plastic and other recyclables were left scrambling to find new places to send it. They face higher costs to get it processed by recyclers at home and in some cases have resorted to sending it to landfill sites as the scrap has piled up too quickly. “Twelve months on, we are still feeling the effects but we have not moved to the solutions yet,” said Garth Lamb, president of industry body Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association of Australia. Some have been quicker to adapt to the new environment, such as some local authority-run centers that collect recyclables in Adelaide, southern Australia. The centers used to send nearly everything — ranging from plastic to paper and glass — to China, but now 80 percent is processed by local companies, with most of the rest shipped to India. “We moved quickly and looked to domestic markets,” said Adam Faulkner, chief executive of the Northern Adelaide Waste Management Authority. “We’ve found that by supporting local manufacturers, we’ve been able to get back to pre-China ban prices.” In mainland China, imports of plastic waste have dropped from 600,000 tons per month in 2016 to about 30,000 a month in 2018, according to data cited by a new report from Greenpeace and environmental organization Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives. Once bustling centers of recycling have been abandoned as firms shifted to Southeast Asia. On a visit to the southern town of Xingtan last year, Chen Liwen, founder of environmental nongovernmental organization China Zero Waste Alliance, found the once-booming recycling industry had disappeared. “The plastic recyclers were gone — there were ‘for rent’ signs plastered on factory doors and even recruitment signs calling for experienced recyclers to move to Vietnam,” she said. Southeast Asian nations affected early by the China ban — as well as Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam were hit hard — have taken steps to limit plastic imports, but the waste has simply been redirected to other countries without restrictions, such as Indonesia and Turkey, according to the Greenpeace report. With only an estimated 9 percent of plastics ever produced recycled, campaigners say the only long-term solution to the plastic waste crisis is for companies to make less and consumers to use less. Greenpeace campaigner Kate Lin said: “The only solution to plastic pollution is producing less plastic.”

china
pollution
recycling
waste
environment
plastic
plastic waste
_asia


Sri Lanka imposes emergency and links international network to terror attacks that killed 290

Abstract: COLOMBO - Sri Lanka said on Monday it was invoking emergency powers in the aftermath of devastating bomb attacks on hotels and churches, blamed on militants with foreign links, which killed 290 people and wounded nearly 500. The emergency law, which gives police and the military extensive powers to detain and interrogate suspects without court orders, would go into effect at midnight local time, the president’s office said. Colombo, the seaside capital of the Indian Ocean island, was jittery the day after the horrifying Easter Sunday attacks. Police said 87 bomb detonators were found at the city’s main bus station, while an explosive went off near a church when bomb squad officials were trying to defuse it. Scores were killed in the church on Sunday. A night curfew went into effect at 8 p.m. There was no claim of responsibility for Sunday’s attacks but suspicion was focusing on Islamist militants in the Buddhist-majority country. Investigators said seven suicide bombers took part in the attacks while a government spokesman said an international network was involved. Police had received a tip-off of a possible attack on churches by a little-known domestic Islamist group this month, according to a document seen by Reuters. The intelligence report, dated April 11, said a foreign intelligence agency had warned authorities of possible attacks on churches by the National Thawheed Jama’ut. It was not immediately clear what action, if any, was taken in response to the tip-off. International anti-terrorism experts said even if a local group had carried out the attacks, it was likely that al-Qaida or Islamic State were involved, given the level of sophistication. Two of the suicide bombers blew themselves up at the Shangri-La Hotel on Colombo’s seafront, said Ariyananda Welianga, an official at the government’s forensic division. The others targeted three churches and two other hotels. A fourth hotel and a house in a suburb of the capital Colombo were also hit, but it was not immediately clear how those attacks were carried out. “Still the investigations are going on,” Welianga said. Police said 24 people had been arrested, all of whom were Sri Lankan, but they gave no more details. Most of the attacks came during Easter services and when hotel guests were sitting down for breakfast buffets. “Guests who had come for breakfast were lying on the floor, blood all over,” an employee at Kingsbury Hotel told Reuters. Cabinet spokesman Rajitha Senaratne said the government believed an international network was involved. “We don’t think a small organization can do all that. We are now investigating international support for them and their other links — how they produced the suicide bombers and bombs like this,” he said. The president, Maithripala Sirisena, said the government would seek foreign help to track overseas links. U.S. President Donald Trump called Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe to pledge U.S. support in bringing the perpetrators to justice, a White House spokesman said. “A terrible, terrible thing. Unthinkable,” Trump later told reporters at a White House event. “We are working with Sri Lanka.” Pope Francis deplored the attacks and called for universal condemnation of what he said were “terrorist acts, inhuman acts” that could never be justified. Buddhist-majority Sri Lanka was at war for decades with ethnic minority Tamil separatists, most of them Hindu, but violence had largely ended since the government victory in the civil war 10 years ago. The country’s 22 million people include minority Christians, Muslims and Hindus. Most of the dead and wounded were Sri Lankans although government officials said 32 foreigners were killed, including British, U.S., Australian, Turkish, Indian, Chinese, Danish, Dutch and Portuguese nationals. Denmark’s richest man, Anders Holch Povlsen, and his wife lost three of their four children in the attacks, a spokesman for his fashion firm said. A British mother and son were killed while eating breakfast at the Shangri-La, British media reported, while five Indian political workers were killed at the same hotel. The U.S. State Department said in a travel advisory “terrorist groups” were plotting possible attacks in Sri Lanka and targets could include tourist spots, transport hubs, shopping malls, hotels, places of worship and airports. Traffic was uncharacteristically thin in normally bustling Colombo on Monday. Soldiers with automatic weapons stood guard outside major hotels and the World Trade Center in the business district. An Australian survivor, identified only as Sam, told Australia’s 3AW radio the hotel was a scene of “absolute carnage. He said he and a travel partner were having breakfast at the Shangri-La when two blasts went off. He said he had seen two men wearing backpacks seconds before the blasts. “There were people screaming and dead bodies all around,” he said. “Kids crying, kids on the ground, I don’t know if they were dead or not, just crazy.” There were similar scenes at two churches in or near Colombo, and a third church in the northeast town of Batticaloa, where worshippers had gathered. Pictures showed bodies on the ground and blood-spattered pews and statues. Dozens were killed in a blast at the Gothic-style St Sebastian church in Katuwapitiya, north of Colombo. Police said they suspected it was a suicide attack. Questions over why the intelligence report warning was not acted upon could feed into a feud between Prime Minister Wickremesinghe and the president. Sirisena fired the pime minister last year and installed opposition strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa in his stead. Weeks later, he was forced to re-instate Wickremesinghe because of pressure from the Supreme Court but their relationship is still fraught as a presidential election nears.

u.s .
christianity
terrorism
islam
sri lanka
al-qaida
islamic state
colombo
national thawheed jama'ut
sri lanka attacks


Former Vietnamese president, who led invasion of Cambodia that ousted Khmer Rouge, dies at 99

Abstract: HANOI - Gen. Le Duc Anh, a Communist Party hard-liner and former Vietnamese president who led the invasion of Cambodia, which led to the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime, has died at 99. Duc Anh, who was born in 1920, spent much of his life in southern Vietnam, where he joined the communist war effort against the French and then the United States. Duc Anh died late Monday “following a long illness,” the government and state media announced. He served as president between 1992-1997, championing the continued primacy of the Communist party as Vietnam embarked on sweeping market reforms that spurred remarkable economic growth. In 1995 he became the first Vietnamese head of state to set foot on U.S. soil after the Vietnam War when he attended the 50th anniversary of the United Nations in New York. Educated in the former Soviet Union and blind in one eye, he held various military posts during the Vietnam War. He was one of the “liberators of Saigon” as deputy commander of the offensive that toppled the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese government. He is best remembered for playing a commanding role in the invasion of Cambodia that drove Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge out of Phnom Penh in 1978, earning him the nickname “Tiger of Cambodia.” “At the time, the Khmer Rouge had plans to fight their way to Saigon,” he told Vietnamese media in 2009. “Without our support … how would the Cambodians have risen up to liberate their own country?” he added. A state funeral is expected to be held for him.

vietnam
vietnam war
khmer rouge
le duc anh


Powerful quake hits southern Philippines a day after deadly temblor in north of country

Abstract: PORAC, PHILIPPINES - A new powerful earthquake hit the central Philippines on Tuesday, a day after a magnitude 6.1 quake rattled the country’s north and left at least 16 people dead, including in a collapsed supermarket, where rescuers scrambled to find survivors. The U.S. Geological Survey put the magnitude of Tuesday’s quake at 6.4, while the local seismology agency said it was 6.5. The quake was centered near San Julian town in Eastern Samar province and prompted residents to dash out of houses and office workers to scamper to safety. There were no immediate reports of casualties or major damage from the latest quake. Classes and office work were suspended in San Julian, where cracks on roads and small buildings and a church were reported. Power was deliberately cut as a precaution in the quake’s aftermath, officials said. Meanwhile, rescuers worked overnight to recover bodies in the rubble of a supermarket that crashed down in Monday’s quake, which damaged other buildings and an airport in the northern Philippines. The bodies of five victims were pulled from Chuzon Supermarket and seven other villagers died due to collapsed house walls in hard-hit Porac town in Pampanga province, north of Manila, said Ricardo Jalad, who heads the government’s disaster-response agency. An Associated Press photographer saw seven people, including at least one dead, being pulled out by rescuers from the pile of concrete, twisted metal and wood overnight. Red Cross volunteers, army troops, police and villagers used four cranes, crow bars and sniffer dogs to look for the missing, some of whom were still yelling for help Monday night. Authorities inserted a large orange tube into the rubble to blow in oxygen in the hope of helping people still pinned there to breathe. On Tuesday morning, rescuers pulled out a man alive, sparking cheers and applause. “We’re all very happy, many clapped their hands in relief because we’re still finding survivors after several hours,” Porac Councilor Maynard Lapid said by phone from the scene, adding that another victim was expected to be pulled out alive soon. Jalad said at least 15 people died in Pampanga province, including those who perished in Porac town. The quake damaged houses, roads, bridges, Roman Catholic churches and an international airport terminal at Clark Freeport, a former American air base, in Pampanga. A state of calamity was declared in Porac to allow contingency funds to be released faster. A child died in a landslide in nearby Zambales province, officials said. At least 14 people remained missing in the rice-growing agricultural region, most of them in the rubble of the collapsed supermarket in Porac, while 81 others were injured, according to the government’s disaster-response agency. The four-story building housing the supermarket crashed down when the quake shook Pampanga as well as several other provinces and Manila, the Philippines’ capital, on the main northern island of Luzon. More than 400 aftershocks have been recorded, mostly unfelt. The U.S. Geological Survey’s preliminary estimate is that more than 49 million people were exposed to some shaking from the earthquake, with more than 14 million people likely to feel moderate shaking or more. Clark airport was closed temporarily because of damaged check-in counters, ceilings and parts of the departure area, airport official Jaime Melo said, adding that seven people were slightly injured and more than 100 flights were canceled. In Manila, thousands of office workers dashed out of buildings in panic, some wearing hard hats, and residents ran out of houses as the ground shook. Many described the ground movement as being like sea waves. A traffic-prone Manila street was partially closed after a college building was damaged by the quake and appeared to tilt slightly sideways toward an adjacent building, officials said. Many schools and government offices, including courts, in the densely packed Manila metropolis were closed Tuesday to allow inspections of their buildings. Philippine seismologists said the back-to-back quakes in the last two days were unrelated and caused by different local faults. One of the world’s most disaster-prone countries, the Philippines has frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions because it lies on the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a seismically active arc of volcanos and fault lines in the Pacific Basin. A magnitude 7.7 quake killed nearly 2,000 people in the northern Philippines in 1990.

earthquake
usgs
u.s. geological survey
pampanga
philippines . luzon
tutubigan
porac